Transmute / Rage Letter
At the end of June, I decided that I wanted to “step back for the weekend” to let some emotions flow and process things I’ve been suppressing. What started as a weekend turned into the entire month of July. I realized I needed more space than I had thought because I felt both burnt out and restless at the same time. During this month, I went through many phases I still want to process in writing. Today, I want to tell you about my rage letter. At the end of July, I took a week off and decided to explicitly allow my emotions to flow again. On Tuesday morning, I started with a breathwork exercise I learned in a workshop with Carla. The psychedelic effect of this exercise continues to surprise me: it usually stirs up a lot of emotions that have accumulated in my body, and I need a few days to let them flow through me. Afterward, I feel clearer and freer. Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent my days in the forest and by the lake. I went alone, sat by the water, then retreated to the woods to soak in the nature and meditate. All with as little phone time or other activities as possible. And wow, did I feel awful at times. Just sitting there, feeling bad, and accepting it without distracting myself was hard to bear. Thankfully, I managed to remind myself now and then that I was doing this intentionally, that it was normal to feel this way, and that these feelings needed to flow through me. This allowed me to observe my emotions from a distance and not take every negative thought associated with them seriously. And somehow, even though I didn’t feel good, it became a deeply beautiful experience—one I remember fondly and consider one of the most impactful of the year. All my life, I’ve been so afraid of "negative" emotions that I’ve always focused on getting rid of them quickly. Now I’m slowly learning that every emotion has its place, and that it can be an incredibly raw and beautiful experience to give space to a feeling I've resisted for so long. Those days were both shitty and sacred. On Wednesday evening, I walked through the city looking for something to eat. Somehow, I got frustrated—nothing was going right. On my way home, I was suddenly overtaken by anger. I was furious at this "stupid vacation," at "just sitting around feeling bad." Suddenly, I was mad at all sorts of things that bubbled up. Luckily, after some time I could remind myself again that it was okay for these emotions to surface, that this was an opportunity to release them. So I marched home (angrily!), sat down in my room, turned on some music, and wrote a rage letter for an hour. I just wrote nonstop, without pausing or questioning. This method is also called stream of consciousness writing. I wanted to write something no one would ever read, giving myself the freedom to say things I'd never otherwise say. Later, I could barely read any of it because it was so scribbled. The words fucking and shit appeared very often.
