The Man Beneath the Anger

My father was an angry man.

Not all the time. Memory has a way of flattening people into a single thing, but nobody is ever just one thing.

There were good days too. Days where he laughed easily, told stories, and seemed lighter somehow. But as a child, it was the anger I noticed most. The unpredictability of it.

You become very observant when you grow up around anger. You learn to read moods before words are spoken. You learn that some people carry storms inside them.

When I was eleven, my mum left my dad.

I went with her.

At the time, I didn't fully understand what had happened. I only knew that our family had changed shape.

As a child, I saw my father's anger. As an adult, I see the hurt that sat beneath it.

The older I've become, the more I've realised that anger rarely exists on its own. Sometimes it grows from wounds that never healed. Sometimes it becomes a shield. Sometimes it is the only way a person knows how to carry what they're carrying.

Age has given me perspective that childhood couldn't.

I can see now that my father was fighting battles I knew nothing about. Battles that followed him through life and coloured the way he saw the world.

He's much better now.

The anger that loomed so large when I was young no longer defines him. What I see now is my dad. A man who has carried things heavier than I ever understood as a child.

And what surprises me most is that, as I've grown older, the feeling that remains isn't resentment.

It's love.

The kind of love that wishes things had been easier for someone. The kind of love that wishes it could take a little of their pain and carry it for them.

I wish I could carry some of his hurt.

Not because it belongs to me, but because I know how heavy it must have been.

My father was an angry man.

But he was never just an angry man.

Dad, if you're reading this, I love you.