I didn’t know I was angry, until I accepted he was gone!

 

I didn’t feel the rage when he died.

Not at the funeral.

Not when I lit a remembrance candle or wrote the kind of grief post you’re “supposed” to write.

It came the moment I fully accepted that he was gone.

That this Earth, this version of my life, no longer had him physically in it.

With that acceptance came something I didn’t expect, a rage so full bodied it literally stole my breath.

Screaming into pillows.

Uncontrollable shaking.

Hyperventilation.

Headaches so fierce they felt like spirit trying to crack my skull open.

The crying, not a soft cinematic grief, but the kind that makes your whole chest ache, your hands claw at the air & your body curls inward like it’s trying to disappear.

No one saw it at its worst & honestly, I don’t know if I would have wanted them to.

I regularly asked the ground to open up and swallow me, not to end it all, but to just stop the intensity.

To take me ‘under’ for a while so I didn’t have to face it anymore.

Because I was angry.

At him.

At me.

At death itself.

At how things were handled after he passed.

At the silence.

At the expectations.

At the fakeness of it all.

At how loud the world kept spinning, like nothing had happened.

I didn’t have to be strong, I just was.

I felt like I had to advocate for him, for what he deserved.

Then later, I was angry at myself for being angry at him.

It was such a mentally fucked up spiral of guilt & truth & emotional static.

When it passed.. 

When the shaking stopped.. 

When my breath returned.. 

When I finally came back into my body?

I felt lighter.

Content, even.

The same way you feel when the physio tweaks an acupuncture needle & you feel the release of tension in the muscle.

That, “Oh my goodness. I didn’t even realise how much that was hurting me until it was gone”  feeling.

I see now that the rage had to come.

It wasn’t a tantrum, it was a release.

A recalibration.

It was my body doing what it needed to do

to make room for what was next.

So if you’re in it right now, if the grief you thought you’d processed is now showing up like a beast, like an earthquake, like something ancient and sacred and unhinged?

Don’t fight it. 

You’re finally safe enough in your body to feel it.

If I could say anything to that rage now?

I’d say:

Welcome.

You were needed.

You cracked me open in a way nothing else could.

I now see you for what you are & I will not be repressed again.