IN MY FEELINGS

I’m bad at feelings. I can never get them right. I either feel too much, or I feel nothing at all. 

The “too much” type of feelings, started young. And the “nothing at all” feelings, followed as a result. 

I have a vivid memory of coming home from school on the last day of third grade. My mom was kneeling in the hallway, folding a fresh pile of laundry. 

“How was your last day?!” She said, beaming at me.

I tried to answer, but my throat got really tight. The back of my ears started to burn up. I couldn’t contain it any longer and I burst into heavy sobs on her lap. 

She frantically asked me what happened, and I reassured her that it was a great last day. It was a great school year, even.

And THAT was exactly the problem. 

Because the next year would be different. A new teacher. New kids. A new backpack hook. I didn’t want a new teacher. I loved the kids in my class. And I had just finally memorized where my backpack hook was!

My mom just laughed at me and called me her “little softie.”

But I hated that. I didn’t like being a softie. I didn’t like being called “sensitive” 15 times a day. I didn’t like my throat tightening up and my ears getting hot whenever I felt like I was about to cry. (Which was a lot - If my brother called me stupid, If I didn’t get picked to say the prayer at church, when Nemo and his dad finally reunited, etc.) I didn’t like falling in love with every boy that let me borrow his extra mechanical pencil led. I didn’t like the stress & logistics of having to plan funerals for all the dead mice the cat would bring in. I didn’t like feeling so deeply. 

So, I toughened up. 

A few months later, my dad and I were watching TV on the couch. He had his arms wrapped around me. Hugging me tight. I felt so comfortable. So loved. So safe. I was getting older and I remember thinking it had been a long time since he had hugged me like that. During a commercial, he started on what I thought was another famous dad lecture, but instead, he nervously told me that my grandma, his mom, was getting really sick. She had been fighting breast cancer for awhile, and it had taken a turn for the worse. 

I loved my grandma. So, so much. She was a magical, warm, Julie Andrews type of grandma. She seemed like a fairy godmother, my entire childhood. Like she could make any pain disappear, or make any dream come true. 

My throat gets tight, my ears start heating up. 

“But…she is going to be okay, right?” I asked, eyes not moving from the tv in front of me.

He didn’t answer for a few moments, and I swear my world stopped for a second. 

Was he…crying? I didn’t dare to turn and look. I had never seen my dad cry. In my 9 years of life. I didn’t think dads were even allowed to cry.

And because of that, the shakiness in what he said next, terrified me. 

“I don’t think so, hon.” 

He sobbed quietly into the back of my neck. 

Nothing else was said after that. Nothing else needed to be said. My dad had just revealed his humanness to me for the first time. He broke character. 

For a decade, he had been keeping me safe. Safe from the real world. From real pain. But he couldn’t protect me from this. He was never going to be able to. And we both knew it. 

So he just held me and cried.

…and I just stared at the screen ahead.

My grandma died a few months later. We flew to Arkansas so my dad could be with her for her last days. It was hard, it was beautiful, and it was mostly all a blur to my 9 year old mind. The only thing I really remember, was how guilty I felt for not crying at her funeral.

I waited and waited for the feelings to come. For the weight of her death to finally come crashing down on me. This was my first experience with death, after all. My first brush with the real world. 

I knew I was sensitive. I had been told I was dramatic, my entire life. And because of how affected I was by having to graduate the third grade, I was afraid my grandma’s death would break me in half. 

But yet… I felt nothing. 

It didn’t make any sense. And I felt immense guilt for it. There was hardly anyone in the world I idolized more than this woman. So where were the tears? When was it going to feel real?

Throughout my life, feelings got even more confusing.

I refused to read the last chapter of Harry Potter, because I couldn’t come to terms with the story ending. 

But years later, when it came to my best friend getting in a car accident and being placed in a medically induced coma for several months…I was numb. 

The smallest things felt like the end of the world, and the major traumas seemed to just roll off of my back.

And the most confusing part about it all? I was applauded for it. 

I was praised for how well I “handled hard times.” They called it “strength” even. 

And of course, that was music to my ears. I didn’t want to be soft. I wanted to be strong. So, when anything painful or threatening came my way, I learned that handling it was as easy as turning my emotions off. Blocking them completely. That was the noble thing to do. The strong thing to do. 

Besides, my grandma wouldn’t have wanted me to be crying anyway. I was simply being strong. Right? Right?! Tell me I’m right. 

Well, after 15 years of being “strong” I learned something. 

Feelings stick around. 

When we block, or suppress our emotions, it can feel like we’re rising above them. Like we beat them. We avoided the pain. We won. 

But we’re really just procrastinating. Those feelings are still there. They made themselves at home in our bodies, and we rarely even realize it. 

Those feelings are there, and they need to be felt. They need to be processed. Feeling emotions is an integral part of being a human being, and I was just skipping out on it. 

Something else I learned? 

I wasn’t a heartless nine year old who didn’t love her grandma.

I was traumatized. 

I experienced Trauma Related Dissociation. Trauma Related Dissociation is described as a 'mental escape' when physical escape is not possible, or when a person is so emotionally overwhelmed that they cannot cope any longer. 

For little nine year old me, sweet as can be, with a heart as big and wide as the sky…the emotions that came from losing my grandma did feel life threatening. I wasn’t equipped or prepared for that level of pain. So subconsciously, to protect myself, I shut off entirely. 

I always assumed that meant I was emotionless about this traumatic event. When in reality, the emotions were so intense, stuffing them away was a means of survival. 

So then what? What happened after I learned that I had years and years of unprocessed feelings hiding in my body?

I had to get them out. 

A few weeks ago, Sev and I were playing in the living room, watching TV. I turned on the movie, “UP.”

I think I’ve seen UP once, maybe twice in my life. It’s that first scene, for me. The Ellie & Carl scene! Give me a break. It. is. Terrible! I can’t make it past the first 15 minutes. I’d have to rearrange my entire schedule for the day. 

But I absentmindedly turned it on, while we played with toys and it took about 10 minutes for me to realize what I had just done. 

That cute little song starts to play… you know the one, and the montage of Ellie & Carl begins. The wedding. The mailbox. The house. The adventure fund! It’s emotionally manipulative Pixar gold. 

Nope. Not for me.

When that song starts up, my fight or flight does too. 

I dove for the remote. I had to change the show before god forbid I accidentally put myself through watching A CARTOON CHARACTER MOURN THE LOSS OF HIS CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND/LOVE OF HIS LIFE.

But right before I could exit out of the movie, I stopped myself. 

“You’re running away from your feelings again.” A really sassy inner voice said to me.

Shit. She was right. That is exactly what I was doing. 

I have spent the past year of my life, feeling my feelings. Making up for lost time. I’ve done every form of therapy you can think of. I’ve journaled. I’ve talked. I’ve meditated. I’ve done mushrooms in the woods. I have been working so hard, for a while now, to let myself feel all the feelings I’ve been avoiding. And let me tell you, it’s hard work.

Take it from me, and feel your feelings when they come. Because what happens when you procrastinate, is once they’re ready to surface, you have no clue what’s going on. After the fact, you can’t pinpoint exactly where the emotions are coming from, you’re just made painfully aware of their presence.

“What is this feeling????” You’ll beg to know. “What is the source of this pain?”

It’s in our nature to want to attach a story, or a reason for why we’re feeling certain emotions. But I’ve learned through trial and error…that’s just simply not the point.

The point, is to go towards the pain, not attempt to understand it.

Let it scare you. Let it engulf you. And then, let it go forever. 

Now it’s gone. Out of your body. 

Now you are free.

We can free ourselves a little bit, every single day, just by going towards those uncomfortable feelings, and not running away from them.

So, instead of changing the show to Frozen that day, I listened to that reminder in my head. I anchored myself to the floor and threw the remote across the room so I couldn’t change my mind.

Then…I forced myself to watch a cartoon character fall in love with his childhood best friend and later, grieve her death.

AND GUESS WHAT? IT SUCKED. I FELT. IT. ALL. I STILL HATE THAT SHIT. 

But I understood I was being tested. Seriously! Have you ever noticed God will continually place you in the same situations until you learn your lesson? Pixar is just practice. So I stared at the screen, and I let the feelings come up. The “how adorable” feelings, and the “how TERRIBLE” feelings. I didn’t question either of them. I just let them take over. I let them engulf me. And for the next 10 minutes, I weeped uncontrollably on the floor of my living room, with a confused, half naked baby sitting on my lap. 

But I did it. I freaking watched the first 15 minutes of UP.  

It sounds silly, but I was so proud of myself.

I’m still working on the whole feelings thing. I have a lot of unprocessed emotions that are still tucked away. But I’m better at noticing when I’m avoiding that process of feeling them. That awareness is making all the difference for me.

The bottom line…is I am FEELING! Which means I’m healing.

But even still, after all the therapy and internal work…a Disney movie will come along to humble me and remind me of who I really am deep down.

A softie.