Nobody warns you about the second wave of anger. I’m talking about the other kind. The ugly kind. The kind that curdles in your belly, a hot, toxic sludge that you can’t seem to purge. The kind that has you rehearsing arguments in the shower, your heart pounding with a rage that feels both righteous and deeply shameful. It’s the anger that leaks out sideways, as sarcasm that bites too deep, as a slammed cabinet door that makes the dog flinch, as a withering look you give your partner that you immediately regret. It’s the anger that you swallow, again and again, because you’ve been told your whole life that “good” people don’t get angry. Especially not good women. So you choke it down, and it becomes a tumor of resentment, a constant, low-grade fever that colors everything in your life with a dull, grey film of bitterness. You feel it in your body, don’t you? A tightness in your jaw that never quite goes away. A knot of fire in your solar plexus that makes it hard to take a full breath. Your shoulders are permanently hunched, braced for the next blow, the next injustice, the next moment you