How to bleed (correctly)

On rage and the politics of palatable pain

Everyone kept asking me why I wasn’t angry. Which felt a little ironic, considering we’re not supposed to be angry, as women. We’re supposed to swallow things quietly, politely say I don’t like it, bonus points for smiling, apologising for letting our messy emotions leak out and cause discomfort.

Which is also quite ironic, because I’ve never been good at discomfort. I’m desperate to be heard, to be seen, to be felt, and historically, I’d scream, I’d yell. I’m a Sagittarius, it’s a birthright of sorts.

When I didn’t scream, people asked why I wasn’t louder. Why I wasn’t furious, frenzied. It’s funny, the way we’re expected to perform pain in preordained ways, to follow a logical script, a socially acceptable spectacle. It’s like I was doing devastation wrong.

You see, I wasn’t angry. I was waterlogged, heavy, hollowed. Wearing a weighted vest at the bottom of the ocean, somehow I could breathe, but I’d forgotten how to swim. Life was moving in slow motion, I was moving slower. Heavier than I’d ever felt, lighter than I’d been since a teen.

My psychologist was baffled by my lack of indignation, the absence of animosity, the presence of only pain. Every session, she’d gently go mining, tenderly prodding the wound, trying to scratch that itch of injustice. She’d search for anger like it was a gemstone lodged in my appendix, except I had an appendicitis when I was eight. All that surfaced was saltwater.

I knew it was unjust. I did, I do. But the sadness had sunk into my fascia, threaded through my ligaments. It wasn’t loud, but it was thorough. It didn’t jolt, it burrowed. It didn’t pass, it pierced. Stronger than any rage, hotter than any embers.

I felt the anger of those around me, palpably. But, I couldn’t hold it. I understood it, but I couldn’t embody it. You see, mine was unlocatable, off-grid, out of office. It was in a hotel robe, freshly showered, feet up, watching telly, resting and relaxing, like it knew I wasn’t ready. Truthfully, I wish we could’ve swapped places, so it could do the yelling, and I could have some silence.

Anger is more palatable than depression, I discovered. It’s sharp, it surges, it crackles like static. It has an arc, an ending, the illusion of resolution. It’s purposeful, passionate, gets packaged as empowering, as long as it doesn’t linger. It makes more sense to others when they’re two steps removed, not deep in the trenches. Distance grants clarity, just like hindsight grants incision.

Sadness is messier, it spills out the edges. It oozes onto every surface, sticky like molasses. It clings to every footstep, every whisper, every outfit. It lives in the morning coffee, in doorframes, in the setting sun. There’s no neat before and after, just a long murky middle. It can’t be cleaned up, it’s not fixable. Sadness without solution isn’t sellable.

Anger would’ve been easier to understand, easier to explain. But only in bite sized pieces, of course. Anything more and it becomes unseemly. We all know how well things go, historically, for angry women. You can be angry but don’t be difficult, don’t be attention-seeking, don’t veer into hysteria. Too much and you’re unstable, too little and you’re complicit. Just a little smattering of rage, right? Not too much though, but not too little.

I kept trying to access the fury, surely it was somewhere. Maybe it was just a little shy, needed a little coaxing, a cup of tea, a glass of riesling. But there was a bookshelf jamming the door shut, stacked high with novellas. Each time I tried to enter, I had to reread one, cover to cover. Familiar narratives took on new meanings, new daggers. It wasn’t just my own stories I was revisiting, it was a library of women’s lives being edited, rewritten, redacted.

Quite a taxing task, you see, sadness was safer.

I kept thinking I’d just wake up one day, engulfed in righteous flames. Kept hoping I’d feel something stronger than what had moved into my marrow. But I wasn’t the firestarter, I was the flood. And nobody cheers for the flood.

The rage arrived eventually. Not as a fire, but as a flicker. So my best friend took me for a walk, and we screamed into the wind. We screamed and screamed and screamed, it felt fucking fantastic.

I did guided breathwork, specifically for rage. Connected breathing, belly ballooning, reaching a crescendo, then a marvellous guttural scream, muffled into a cushion, of course, wouldn’t want the neighbours to hear me. I’d scream in the car as I drove, as long as I wasn’t stuck in traffic, wouldn’t want to make other drivers unsettled.

The screaming felt good, a total release. But it wasn’t really my elusive anger surfacing, it was the overflow of months of turmoil, urgently needing an outlet. The screaming emptied the ache, dispelled the emotions cramping my limbs, softened the grip on my throat. It dissipated the noise for a period, but gradually the heaviness would resettle.

There’s a choreography to righteous rage, I discovered, but I didn’t know the steps. I was told to be the firestarter, when really I was the flood. I felt like googling ‘how to light a fire when you’re soaking wet and freezing’. I just wanted to be warm, didn’t know how else to prove it. Why did I have to prove it?

It’s hard to explain anger’s absence. I suppose the best I can do is this: it’s a particular kind of pain, realising your selfhood wasn’t valued. Not enough to be granted autonomy, not enough for a morsel of honesty, not enough to do the kinder thing and release me. If you know, you know. If you don’t, you’re lucky.

I know it’s an injustice.
Sure, it’s enraging.
But I’m tired of being told how to bleed.

I was devastated.
My soul was leaking.

Why isn’t that enough?
Why do you need me to scream?

We say we want honesty, but only if it fits the narrative. We love a redemption arc, but squirm throughout the melancholic middle. We applaud blazing then bouncing back, but not sadness without solution. We want blood, but only if it dries quickly, only if it doesn’t stain the rug, only if it doesn’t stick.

Maybe it’s not that I wasn’t angry. Maybe mine was just speaking another language. One with sea brine and silence, with molasses and bone. One I wasn’t sure how to translate, wasn’t sure how to make palatable. When you spend enough years flinching, you forget how to yell.

---