The speaker looks back at how anger used to take over their body. Tears, pounding fists, hair-pulling, all at once, so tangled that even now they can't say whether the hair-pulling was meant to stop the hitting or to cause more hurt. The scene in the car is the most telling: the speaker hits the door, tips their head back to keep the tears in, and counts the seconds until they're alone and can finally cry.
The poem suggests why. A parent's voice, yelling "don't cry" and "don't let people see you cry," taught the speaker that showing feeling is something to hide. Instead of learning how to handle anger, they learned to bottle it up. The last stanza sounds bitter and resigned. The speaker asks how anyone could tell their own child that tears make them weak, then admits, "i did what i was told." The mood is raw, tense, and sad, with a quiet ache underneath the anger.