staying tender

on empathy, anger, and forgiveness

when i could spend the weekend out on a bender,

do i get callous or do i stay tender?

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Julien Baker’s Relative Fiction is the first song to make me ugly cry in a long time - probably because it begs a question I ask myself nearly every day: how should I hold myself in relation to those I’ve hurt and those who have hurt me? Do I forgive and forget? Forgive but not forget? Forget but not forgive because the trauma’s fucked up my memory anyways?

I think I feel too much empathy.

They say “empathy without boundaries is self-destruction,” and I can attest to this because I feel it, all the time, every minute of the day, for everyone. Even for those who have hurt me, or maybe especially for those who have hurt me. I find it extremely difficult to make concrete moral judgments about people, even when that person clearly sucks. The “hurt people hurt people” mantra might as well be written on the inside of my eyelids, because it occurs to me as an independent thought as frequently as I close my eyes. Expressing empathy when it harms you or allows others to continue to harm you is self-destruction. (What a take!) I’ve been guilty of this as much as any other eldest daughter who sacrifices herself to bear the burdens of others because ultimately, I do not value my own needs.

I also struggle with anger.

I often don’t feel angry about the things done to me until way after the fact. Months later. Sometimes even years later. A watched pot never boils, except when the alternative is to watch my anger fester. Becoming angry at the things and people that have harmed me is a Sisyphean endeavour. It often takes those around me feeling angry on behalf of me to jumpstart me into feeling mad. I am a professional chameleon, one who looks to others for direction and mimics their responses to the things that happen to me.

My inability to feel anger results from an innate understanding that I am not worth feeling angry over. Any disservice done to me is not that big a deal. I know this to be untrue on a conscious level; I am a whole person who deserves proper treatment and proper love and everything else “right” that I struggle so much to accept. The delayed reaction is proof of this: three or four months later I’ll sit up in my chair and realize, “oh, shit! that was a fucked up thing that happened to me! what the fuck!” Too little too late.

When the watched pot finally does boil, I switch: I can’t let go of my anger. I worked hard for it, spending weekly therapy sessions and late-night conversations with friends grasping for the indignation that should’ve been automatic to wear proudly like a badge: I am important to me and so I feel angry at this thing. Once I have the badge, it cannot come off. I cling to it like a child to their favorite stuffed animal; dragged carelessly through playground mulch, propped up in its own chair at the dinner table, shamefully hidden in the depths of a shabby Jansport backpack. Attached at the hip. I toiled, finally able to feel injustice at what is unjust, but I need to be able to cite it, to reference it and leverage it to my own defence. I am coloured red and I cannot change back.

For me, empathy and anger are two sides of the same coin, two disparate attempts to resolve the same issue. Anger fuels grudges, and in most cases, holding a grudge isn’t a radical decision. I am a chronic over-forgiver and a fountain of endless second chances, and holding purposeful grudges has been my remedy of choice. It was, at first, an empowering thing for someone who has to push to even feel angry at all. But as time passes, long after the opposer has been cast out from my life, grievances weigh heavy on my heart and the ground turns to quicksand under my feet. As long as I hold onto anger over something, I hold onto the need to act on that anger. Anger fuels the need to defend myself, to confront, to win.

Empathy thrives where anger falters.

When I find myself no longer able to hold onto the fury, I lose my grip and collapse: sinking into what my heart wants to have done all along.

Their parents are fucking awful.

It must be difficult being alone so often.

I can’t imagine being responsible for as much as they are.

I’d like to forgive instead.

There is a large-scale cultural misunderstanding of forgiveness precipitated by a culture of lovelessness - we misinterpret that to forgive is to condone. Forgiveness is an incredibly personal act; it does not even require the other person’s knowledge or involvement. Anger necessitates our attention, our constant energy. It is similar to an addiction; it is something that requires constant service in order to maintain it. To let go of it is to drop the weight. Stop carrying things that make you move more slowly and sink into the quicksand.

Anger is absolutely a natural response to offences against us, but it is in no way sustainable. I’m showing my graduate school brain^¹when I say that anger is a secondary emotion. Beneath it is pain. But pain feels a lot less dignified, a lot less calm, cool, collected of us. Feeling hurt doesn’t necessarily scream “I know my worth!” in a culture where, for some reason², those two things are mutually exclusive. They ought not to be.

The heart is a muscle, same as any other: when overextended, its virtuosity weakens. When we devalue our own needs in service of others, we create breeding grounds for resentment, loathing (self and other), shame, anger, callousness; we make it easier for these things to thrive in us. It is easy to find nobility in overextended empathy because we do not blink twice at the idea of a woman (usually) being nothing other than her services to others. We actually value this trait in women; it is that sinister prerequisite for all women to be maternal, and for maternity to mean egregious selflessness. No one wants to acknowledge that this is an incredible disservice to ourselves and to those we prioritize over ourselves. How does the man learn to fish if we keep giving him so many fucking fish?

Forgiveness is not about being okay with the ways we’ve been hurt. Forgiveness is not about letting that person “get away with” whatever they’ve done. It does not mean there are no consequences. Anyone who operates under such a definition does not honour their pain and renders themselves unable to move on from it. What does holding on to anger do but root you in the past? Forgiveness is about staying tender. Forgiveness is about turning inwards and nurturing our bruised hearts. A watched pot never boils; an unattended wound never heals. Our energy is finite, and it is much better spent on restoration than on holding bitter grudges. Forgiveness frees us from the anger, blame, fear, and resentment we tie to another person. Forgiveness is a fundamentally human act and a fundamentally necessary one for a productive, communal collective. We are nothing without each other.

When we choose anger over forgiveness, we provide it sustenance and space to dig its claws in, to root itself deeper in our hearts. Its roots will leave marks on us; they will drain us over time like leeches. To choose forgiveness is to choose love, and love is an act of revolution. I want anger to be a shallow tree in me. I want to uproot it, exorcise it, and salve its wounds with mercy and compassion. I want tenderness to cultivate in me and entrench its roots in my veins.

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who wrote this?

this edition of culture vulture was written by

maya 💌

(they/them) who is a writer first and a person second. they write on sensitivity, love, girlhood, capitalism, and feeling like shit all the time. you can find them at

deeply in distress

on substack & @verymuchmaya on instagram.

want to be published in culture vulture?

if you’re a pop culture/ internet writer and you feel like you’ve got something to say that fits with our culture vulture vibe, send me a draft to luce@shityoushouldcareabout.com and I’ll see what I can do 𓆩♡𓆪

1. for my master’s in counseling. I’m sure that explains a lot.

2. capitalism.