Well, fuck.

Therapy yesterday was amazing, but probably the most difficult session to get through yet. I can’t go into details yet since I’m still processing, but I know this therapy is working because it’s bringing up emotions that I have repressed and buried, emotions that, as I wrote yesterday, I pretended not to feel because it was easier than actually sitting with the pain. I had several personal breakthroughs yesterday that blew my mind. But today there’s been some fallout, which isn’t unexpected when trying to heal from trauma.

Today, I am fuming mad.

I’m not an angry person by nature. But I have been angry all day. So angry, I can’t stop shaking. So angry, I’ve been on the verge of tears at several points. And I feel justified in my anger, validated in it as I give myself permission and space to just feel. I struggle with giving myself space to feel the things I do. I want to resolve them, I want to fix what’s causing them, I want to explain them away – anything besides just sit with them. Society teaches girls that our emotions are volatile, toxic, unsafe. But emotions on their own cannot be those things.

The choices we make because of what we feel can be.

How often are we told that we’re too emotional and not to let our emotions get the better of us? How often is a woman’s anger portrayed as petty, nagging, complaining? So much of this is internalized from a young age, that I’m still learning how to unravel it all. So I’m not used to just letting myself be angry. To feel the thing for however long I need to, and then processing through it. It’s an uncomfortable place to be in.

This weekend, my partner and I are going to stay at his family’s beach house for the entire week next week. We’ll be working from the coast, and I honestly can’t wait. I won’t have to cram in as much ocean as I can into only a few days. I can actually enjoy the experience of being on the coast for more than a weekend. I need it so much. Plus, I’ll be bringing along a bunch of books to read, notebooks to write in, and a soul ripe and ready for the ocean. It’s going to be just what I need after this week.

Healing is hard. Healing is painful.

But the outcome is to live my life in a radical state of self-love, self-acceptance, and self-fulfillment.