i am angry. i am unlovable.

i am mostly scared these things are true

some feelings don’t even knock anymore.

they just walk in. make themselves comfortable. sit on your chest like they’ve lived there all their life. and this one—this feeling—i don’t even know when it arrived. i just know it never left.

i’m angry. and it’s not the kind of anger that burns quick and then clears. it’s thick. slow. the kind that clings to the inside of your ribs. the kind that disguises itself as detachment. it belongs to my mother and attached itself to me.

i’m angry because i’ve had to make room for other people’s comfort in spaces i was never really invited into. angry because i’ve had to translate myself so many times i don’t know what language i started in. angry because when i do finally say something, people flinch. or laugh. or leave.

i am angry because i have swallowed too much. because i have shrunk to fit.

because i have tried to be gentle in rooms that only made me brittle.

and underneath all of that—underneath the rage—is a truth i don’t always want to name. i don’t feel lovable. not in the deep, unconditional, full-bodied kind of way. not in the way people write poems about. not in the way people stay for.

i’ve been liked. i’ve been desired. i’ve been tolerated. but loved? really loved? the kind of love that doesn’t hinge on performance, or usefulness, or being low-maintenance?

i don’t know if i’ve ever felt that and believed it was mine to keep.

i think i carry that with me in every interaction. like a warning label.

like a ghost. like something people can smell on me before i even speak.

and maybe that’s the worst part— the fear that none of this is imagined. that i’m not misunderstood. that i’m not being hard on myself. that maybe this is just what it is.

and i try. i try to be open. i try to be soft.

i try to give people the chance to prove me wrong.

but it doesn’t take much for me to shut the door. to say never mind. to disappear mid-connection. because hope feels dangerous.

and disappointment feels inevitable.

and god, i know how this sounds. dramatic.

ungrateful. self-centred. but that’s the thing about these feelings—they don’t care how they sound. they just show up.

so yes. i am angry. i am unlovable.

and i am mostly scared these things are true. i don’t have a lesson. i don’t have closure. i’m just tired. and i don’t know what to do with any of it.

-tat

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