Is it okay to say “I’m angry”?

The main topic of my inner life this week has been all about anger. Yes, I can say “irritability” so it sounds more neatly packaged and normal, esp for a pregnant woman. But anger is tough for me, both to feel AND to admit.
For some people, being sad seems “bad”. Crying and showing this emotion, or allowing oneself to take time to grieve and express hurt — to do this they feel weak, out of control, and vulnerable. But for me, it isn’t sadness that I fear, its anger. It is the emotion that I least understand, least know what to DO with, and least have a picture of its healthy expression.
To learn that no emotion is “bad” and that a “closer walk with Thee” isn’t the one-size-fits-all for every “negative” emotion (are you picturing all my air quotes? I’m doing them!) has been eye opening. I might have known these were myths on some level, but I still lived as though this dormant tiger inside me must be tamed, not released. Anger is scary to me, not only because I have a few scarring memories of rage displayed to me as a child, (and the fear that it’s somehow inherent, which is almost worse), but also because I have rarely practiced anger and allowed myself to be okay with my own anger. And I don’t mean about MOST things in life, because there are plenty of relationships and situations in which I can handle being displeased and expressing that with boundaries and staying cool and collected. But in the last season of my life, anger over one or two related situations/people have been very difficult for me to know what to do with.
Namely, I am angry about most of my past with Hubby, and often angry that I am currently pregnant as well (though I differentiate this from the baby, whom I’m excited to see and love). I picked up somewhere along the way that anger was a wasteful emotion — and an immature one at that. A productive, mature, God-loving gal would never really feel angry, and certainly not for years!
But every time I stuffed it down, prayed for its removal, denied its existence, and distracted myself with the rest of my life, the anger never went anywhere. I didn’t even realize how THERE it was until the revelation 7 months ago that my husband, my marriage of over 5 years, was built on lies and was falling down all around me. For awhile, I recognized my anger, and believed that I had every right to be angry for the ways I had been cheated and abused. But as time went on, I struggled with feeling angry still, knowing that I was beginning to love my husband and that my present marriage was completely different than it had been before – so I waited for the release of forgiveness and acceptance that was surely around the corner. Well, so far, it hasn’t come, at least not in any sort of eventful, official way! There is still so much processing going on and so much healing to do. Like a large wound, I still have a lot of work to do and time to allow for its healing. I can’t yet look down and see the faint scar of a hurt that “once was”. It’s still throbbing, it still hurts. The miraculous part about it is that I have a best friend with whom I can share this with, whose anger at his past matches my own, and there we find common ground.
Being pregnant, hormonal and exhausted has, as I anticipated, made the healing process even more difficult for me. My days are stretched out over a fitness course of leaps and hoops which I must attempt to scale, only to make it to the next sleep-deprived morning and try to live as gratefully and lovingly as I can, while my anger sometimes rears up again, begging to be recognized, validated, and released. The physical and emotional demands of bearing a child take a toll on a woman’s body and soul, and having just gone through a life crisis, are even more debilitating sometimes. I want to be happy, rested, and joyous, but often find myself distracted, resentful, and tired instead. And then feel guilty that I am not thriving in each of my roles in my family life.
My counselor and I have talked about an “anger plan” in which I can journal what I am angry about daily (so I recognize what I am actually angry about and don’t take it out on anyone or anything else), and then find some sort of physical release for the anger that can symbolically let it seep out in a healthy, harmless way. I asked her, “So… revisiting it for an hour every day is really supposed to make it eventually, like, GO AWAY?!” It seems so counter-intuitive to me. But since crazier things have worked, I’m giving it a try She basically said, “In theory, anger is one of those emotions that DOES work this way. You name it, release it, practice it, and you’ll find it much less overwhelming and scary”.
Just to highlight how hard this is for me, those of you who have been around this blog awhile know that I am fairly no holds bar about my content. Yet here I am, writing about my anger with honesty, and I feel really hesitant to push “publish”! I hear the disapproving voices (real or imagined) because in my world, it is simply not okay to be so angry that you would JOURNAL about it daily!
But then, I remember that I am not alone. There have been many people hurt and burned, esp in their marriages, and maybe they too are finding out that to “get over” their anger prematurely never quite settles anything. Status quo might return sooner, but peace of mind doesn’t.
So yeah, here we go: it’s okay to be angry! It’s doesn’t mean I’m a vengeful maniac, lol, it just means I’m legitimately angry at a few things, and I might as well face the facts. Whew. Why is recovery so dang arduous?!?!