A Season for Rage

Channeling anger into something beautiful

Hii!

We’ve had a bit of a break, but we’re back at it with SadGirl Submissions! Every week, I’ll share personal essays from fellow Sadgirls in our community. This allows us to share our experiences with each other and normalize emotional expression.

This week’s essay is from Marie D., a writer, nonprofit professional, and graduate student at American University working toward her master’s in Intercultural and International Communication. Personally and professionally, she is driven to strengthen connections among the African diaspora through cultural engagement. In what little free time she can squeeze out, she enjoys traveling, nature, reading, and writing – find her work here.

If you’d like your essay considered for a future post, check out this post.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing a deep cleansing throughout my spirit. A removal of confusion and wandering and doubt. Clarity of my way forward through a life I never felt like I owned until I claimed the emotion we’re taught to overcome—my rage.

Like all of us, I’ve experienced a lot of defeat in my life. But each defeat that I accepted destabilized my belief in myself. Coming off the heels of my 36^th birthday and going into my last year of graduate school, I’ve found myself reflecting on my past setbacks. My 20s were marked by a series of failures and challenges:

• Changing my undergraduate major from English to sociology because I feared, and accepted that fear, that I would never “make it” as a writer (for the record, I did end up liking sociology).

• Deciding to drop out of my first attempt at grad school after being fired from my internship and having my professor tell me my personality was not fit for the program (me being introverted, although she also claimed to be introverted?).

• Experiencing verbal abuse from two senior staff members on a weekly basis while working at a summer camp, and struggling to stand up for myself

• Making so many mistakes at various jobs I’ve held over the years and letting each and every mistake serve as proof of why I wasn’t cut out for a role, no matter if I tried to improve or not

• The pandemic ending a job I did end up loving and feeling confident in, leaving me unemployed and then underemployed for over two years, and feeling that I was not allowed to have good things happen to me (this period felt especially hopeless).

And while each incident broke down my self-confidence, accepting that I was incapable and unworthy of getting back up and fighting for what I wanted is what led to the anger I turned on myself for years. An anger that fed the depression and anxiety I struggled with for a significant part of my life.

It was during that low point during Covid, when the world was reshaping itself before our eyes, that I decided I was tired of swallowing defeat. I was absolutely sick of letting everyone and everything else but myself determine my future—even if that factor was a world-stopping pandemic. I was going to find a job and succeed at it no matter what, go back for my master’s, and achieve everything else I had once set my heart to.

And I did.

My current life has not been free of challenges—I have definitely dealt with toxicity and bullying in my current job. But this time around, I’ve made the choice to turn the anger, the rage I felt at allowing others and outside factors to dictate my life course, into what fuels my desire to succeed. Not only was I going to prove my past wrong, I was going to prove myself right.

Workplace mistakes and nasty coworkers will always exist, but I choose to keep being better every single day, continuing to stoke that fiery rage that won’t allow me to give up. I’ve built a great reputation in my current role despite the negative experiences, and I’m killing it in grad school – I have a high GPA, maintain two leadership roles, volunteer in my community as part of my scholarship, and have opened myself up to multiple travel opportunities. I’m claiming this period of my life as my season of rage and my season of triumph. My past school goals and career paths may not have been for me in the long run, but I am confident that my current path is.

I no longer see rage as less desirable than more palatable emotions like niceness or agreeableness, emotions that once made others breathe easier while I choked on my own heart. My rage is now what fills my lungs and pumps my blood. Keeping the peace only kept the peace for the opposing parties but robbed me of the life I knew I wanted. I walk through life now understanding that to rage against defeat is to rage for the life I know I deserve to create.

Note from Jacque:

May we all embrace our rage this season and transmute it into a fiery passion and deep acceptance of self. Thank you, Marie!

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Read my surreal novel: How to Be a Better Adult

Read my nerdy self-help book!: The Magical Girl’s Guide to Life

Follow me on Instagram!: @Jacqueaye