Palesa_Baabua
This book does not begin with rage. It begins with tenderness-quiet, hopeful, almost reverent. The kind of love that believes endurance is a virtue and silence is maturity. The kind of love that bends itself smaller so it can fit inside other people's expectations. Before the anger ever learns its name, it is devotion. It is loyalty. It is the desperate, aching desire to be chosen and to belong.
"All This Anger Used To Be Love" is a revelation, not a confession. It is the slow unearthing of moments Zayelle once defended, minimized, and forgave too quickly. This book follows her through the emotional archaeology of her life, as she revisits the events that shaped her fury-not as isolated explosions, but as something carefully cultivated over time. Every chapter peels back a layer, asking a question she was never allowed to ask before: when did love stop being safe?
The story unfolds in fragments, memories surfacing like old photographs pulled from a drawer she avoided for years. There is childhood, where affection was conditional and approval was earned through obedience. Where being "good" meant being quiet, accommodating, and emotionally self-sufficient long before she had the words for it. Love was present, yes-but it was inconsistent, unpredictable, and often tangled with fear. She learned early that harmony mattered more than honesty, and that disappointment-hers or anyone else's-should be swallowed whole.
As she grows, the pattern follows her. Friendships where she gives more than she receives. Rooms where she is known for her listening but never truly heard. She becomes the strong one, the reliable one, the one who can take a joke, take a hit, take less. She learns to call neglect "understanding," emotional distance "independence," and her own discomfort "growth." The world praises her resilience, never noticing that it is built on self-erasure.
This book is not about revenge or blame.