He Wasn't Angry With Me

There was a stranger— a face I had never known, with a storm resting quietly inside his eyes. He didn't know me, and I didn't know him, yet every word he screamed felt strangely as though he was calling my name. He kept speaking— in a voice sharpened by anger, with words heavy with resentment, while I simply remained silent. I wasn't listening to his words anymore. I was reading the lines on his forehead— one carried the weight of a defeat, another, an unfinished dream, and perhaps one belonged to a pain he had been hiding even from himself. He was certain I would answer back. After every sentence, he paused— searching my eyes for a response, as if my words would somehow give him the victory he was waiting for. But I remained silent. And slowly, my silence began to fall upon his anger like rain upon a burning city. At last, his voice grew tired, his anger surrendered, and without another word, he quietly walked away. I remained standing there… And for the first time, I wondered— Perhaps we are most angry with others when we no longer have the strength to fight with ourselves. Maybe he wasn't angry with me at all. Maybe he was angry with the circumstances that had turned him into someone he never meant to become. Maybe there was no anger in his eyes… only an old, unhealed pain. And perhaps… Some people don't really want to hurt others. They simply don't know where else to put the weight they have been carrying inside themselves. He left his weight with me. He just didn't know that I had felt it.