All My Rage

by Sabaa Tahir

What’s the word for when someone drinks so much, they are ruining your best friend’s life? Or the word for a man so vengeful about his own past that he wants to destroy your future? What’s the word for a woman who was sick for months, but refused to go to the doctor until it was too late? The word for the girl at school whose personal mission is to mess with your head? Anger’s not the right word. Rage. That’s what this feeling is, eating me up.

“There’s more to life than the things in front of you,” Santiago says, and now, finally, I listen. “Sometimes we hold on to things we shouldn’t. People. Places. Emotions. We try to control all of it, when what we should be doing is trusting in something bigger.”