There’s something that has caught my attention lately, and it’s bringing a change in me, even a physical one: Anger and Rage. My therapist asked me several times if I felt anger. I thought about it, reflected on it. I realised that what I had been feeling was a deep sadness that pushed anger down so hard it never allowed it to surface. I’ve always been terrified of letting that anger out, while suddenly becoming like the people who hurt me. I’m afraid of looking in the mirror and suddenly seeing myself as one of those men, red with rage, punching the wall instead of throwing a fist at a frightened little rabbit. That’s the concept of anger I’ve carried with me, and it terrifies me to become that.
In one of the many group therapies I attended—more than fifteen years ago now—something happened that has been circling in my head ever since. I didn’t understand it very well at the time, and I’ve never quite managed to build the story that explains why I reacted the way I did. The therapist organised a kind of performance exercise: she passed around a medium-sized makeup mirror, and we each had to say something good or positive about ourselves while looking at our reflection. When it was my turn, I took the mirror in my hands, looked at my reflection, and immediately had to push it away from my face. The image sent flashes of light into my eyes, blinding me violently, forcing me to shut them. In that reflection, I saw my father, red with rage, punching the wall to keep from hitting me. I couldn’t say a word and just passed the mirror to the next person. And now, fifteen years later, I finally understand why I wasn’t able to look into that mirror.
Now, since I’ve been using a cane, part of the shock hasn’t come so much from carrying it myself, but from witnessing how others react to me. And that, for the first time, has provoked anger in me—a strong sense of injustice. And because I’m not the type to hit or scream, the way I’ve managed this anger has been by filing complaints like mad, standing up to people for the first time, setting boundaries, and formally challenging things that are obviously unjust, dangerous, or disrespectful. Things that used to make me deeply sad, I now face with anger. That’s why my therapist asked me if I felt it. And yes, now I do.
And this anger is breaking me free from the sadness that used to paralyse me—leaving me drained, passive, lying in bed crying. Anger has made me get up, shout, take action, confront everything, denounce it, and leave a record of it.
I’ve also noticed a physical change. My left side has always been worse than my right: I would twist my left ankle constantly, break my left little toe, the pain always ran down from my lower back into my left leg. Now it’s my right shoulder and my right knee that hurt, while my left side hurts far less. Could it be connected? Is this my body’s reaction to anger—that before it was trapped in my left side, and now it’s balancing out? Not ideal, since the pain is spreading, but at least I feel the shift.
For years I tried to push anger down, cover it with sadness, keep it buried out of fear of becoming a perpetrator of violence. I carried that weight like a stone of grief, and the sadness stopped me from acting. Now anger is what’s pushing me to act.
I can confirm this: anger is the engine of justice.
By Elisa