You Have Permission to Feel Angry

I’ve been getting in touch with my emotions recently. Anger in particular. You see, I grew up in a home where emotions were strictly prohibited. I had an alcoholic father that was drunk more often than he was sober. He would be classified as a “mean drunk”. His preferred method of communication was yelling or using his fists to convey his point. Crying was not allowed, and if caught, there were a variety of punishments that could be doled out. Laughing was alright, as long as it was outside, but any other form of expression was not tolerated. It was always a relief when he got drunk enough that he would pass out on the couch. It was like a little reprieve. While I have not had a relationship with him in nearly 10 years, I hear that he has given up the bottle and sorted through some of his pain. I genuinely wish him the best and hope that this is true.

After my mom left my father, she decided that an organized religion was the way for our family to heal from the emotional scars my father had left. I use the term religion loosely here because of how controlling the church was/is and how much damage it has caused to many of the people that attend.

Between the combination of my early life growing up with my father and then my adolescent life spent within a church that told me what to wear, how to think, and how to live, I never truly allowed myself to experience emotions. I was so focused on controlling my thoughts and emotions that I never learned how to properly deal with what I was feeling. And then I was raped, again.

The first time it happened, in May, I retreated into myself. I thought of everything that I had done to cause the rape. Was it something I was wearing, was I sure that I wasn’t just overreacting, what would the church think? While I have not attended services at the church in nearly two years, it made me realize how much of a hold the church still had on me. Gripped with shame, guilt, and embarrassment, I started to shut everyone and everything out.

I was going to counseling, but I wasn’t really talking. There were some sessions where I would answer my counselor in yes and no answers and nothing else. I was at a standstill and I could not see myself ever getting past what happened to me in May. And then it happened again.

Toward the end of January, I was raped again. By a friend I had known since I was in high school. This next statement is going to sound bizarre, but hear me out. This second rape is truly one of the best things that could have happened to me. I don’t mean to say that I wish it had happened, that it is good that it happened, or that anything about the actual event is positive. I hate that it happened, but it ignited a fire in me.

It was shortly after I was raped that I connected with We Are HER, and it was here that I felt like I was given permission to feel angry. Something that I had never been allowed to do before, but has been crucial to my healing.

I am finally allowing myself to feel emotions about what happened. I’m angry and sad and going through a rollercoaster of emotions, but I finally feel like I can heal from this. I’m not stuck in the guilt and blame of what happened, though there are still times where those thoughts resurface, I’m fucking angry. And I’m embracing the anger because right now, the anger feels good. It feels like hope that I, and all of you, can move forward from our experiences. That this journey, though hard, will be worth it and that we are all unstoppable. That we can do this and that our experiences won’t define us but will help us grow in ways we never could have imagined. But ultimately, this anger makes me feel that emotions are what gives each of us the energy to keep fighting, even when it feels impossible.