for a long time, I thought I was incapable of feeling emotion.
as i was growing up - as far back as i can consciously remember - if I had an event or trip coming, a visit with friends, or was anticipating a concert or art showing, i manufactured emotions. I knew what I should feel - that I should feel happy or excited. but I also knew what I felt was feigned - they were the feelings I was compelled to tell others I was experiencing, when they asked. they were emotions I saw on other people, and worked to replicate. they were the feelings I couldn’t reach far enough into my gut to feel. express. share. understand.
I also thought that my absence of excitement (and sadness and laughter and happiness) all meant that I didn’t know how to experience them. I would look to other people for cues on how to present as happy or excited or disappointed. i would mimic body language and facial expression until i was an expert. and to some degree, i began to feel shadows of what those emotions should likely feel like. a small glimmer of what excitement should feel like. a slight pull of happiness. a tiny tug of love and affection. all of them, the product of hard work in the ‘manufacturing emotion’ sector of my brain.
it made me wonder what was wrong with me. it made me wonder what was missing in my brain or heart. it made me wonder if I’d ever feel the way others did. and as a result, i’ve spent the vast majority of my life wondering what has kept me from connecting with people. what kept me from being able to genuinely be in a moment of excitement or fun or happiness with those i loved.
then, i was in yoga class (as all of my good stories/revelations begin). while lying in savasana - thinking about 1 million things other than just being in savasana (so sue me). while we were all relaxing (and i was creating my ‘to do’ list), the yoga teacher spoke. and in her words, she started talking about reflections of life, and happiness. that one should reach into the parts of ourselves that allow us to experience the world like a child. to look at things with the eyes of a child. with the mind of a child. with the wonder that a beautifully naive mind and unprotected heart, inspects and absorbs things. when the words came out of her mouth, i thought back to the last time I felt excitement - the last time i felt an overwhelming feeling of bursting in my chest and an uncontrollable smile on my face.
then. the other day, I was having a conversation with someone. I had shared with that person that I felt like I had to manufacture emotion - something I don’t know that I’ve ever said to anyone other than my counsellor. I told them that I felt like I had to look to other people to determine what the appropriate reaction to a situation would be. that when travelling, I revelled in big moments because I knew I should; when at a party, I shared excitement and happiness because I know that’s what normal people would feel; when eating at a fancy restaurant, I embraced the setting and the food because I knew I should. And I wondered out loud if it was because I didn’t know what emotions were, or if i simply didn’t have access to them, or feel them wholly. then, within the same conversation, I expressed excitement about something small that happened that day - something subtle. something that induced joy in a very childlike way. whether it was the way the sun hit the deck and left stripes from the leaves on my plants; or it was a beautiful old abandoned building and the colours of the paint against the overgrowth that had overtaken the space; or a new hot dog stand I had discovered the day before; or it was the raccoon peeking it’s giant fluffy head out from between two houses, with it’s little hands holding on, while it explored it’s surroundings. whatever it was, it was that minute, mundane moment or detail that made something inside of me glow and burst like a 4 year old child who is seeing the world for the first time.
THEN. earlier this week, i was doing research on chakras - and more specifically, the second chakra. the sacral chakra. svadhisthana. and what it means for this chakra to be blocked. and among the reading was the exploration of numbing our lives to save ourselves from failure - and to protect ourselves from that, to explore that, we should play. play like a child. and, when we fail, react as a child would, and start again. to create. to laugh. to be open to making mistakes and getting messy. to be curious. to approach the world as a child.
and I would be naive to think that the universe didn’t put each of those moments in my path - one right after another - for a reason.
last year, i had a revelation about vulnerability - i consumed brene brown’s teachings on vulnerability, and numbing negative emotions or numbing our access to negative emotions to save ourselves from hurt and sadness and all those emotions that fall on the ‘bad/sad/mad’ end of the spectrum. and, while it took some time, i finally listened to brene. i finally heard that when we numb the negative, hard emotions, we also are numbing the positive emotions that we may otherwise have had access to. by stopping ourselves from feeling - by trapping those emotions in a locked box - we aren’t simply stopping the negative emotions. we aren’t protecting our hearts, our selves, our heads, from just the bad. we insulate ourselves from all of the good as well.
and finally something clicked. though I wrote those words last summer, there was something about this week that made this land more wholly. it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t missing emotion, or maybe emotion wasn’t unrecognizable to me - but instead, perhaps I have been numbing emotion (both negative and positive) for so long, that it was no longer recognizable or accessible to me. that maybe as a child, I wasn’t incapable of expression - but perhaps my need for control started LONG ago, and I had been protecting myself from negative emotions for a lot longer than I thought. and, consequently, protecting myself from the good stuff too.
while it took some time, i have dug hard to find crumbs, clues, of the existence of emotion within myself. my excitement over an amazing horror movie - or a newly discovered abandoned building, a photo of freddie mercury, or fries supreme plus a hot dog in one day - exists. it’s real. and that excitement tells me that certainly I am not lacking the emotional capacity to feel - if i can feel happiness for fries and cheese sauce and tomatoes and refried beans, SURELY it exists within me to feel that excitement for other things. but instead, something is blocking those larger expressions. blocking me from accessing those feelings - out of fear. fear of being let down. fear of disappointment. fear of hurt and sadness and loneliness and abandonment. fear of anything that i may have to feel if something - anything - didn’t work out.
I have protected myself for so long from these fears, and from feeling these things, that it seems i’ve also blocked my ability to feel the good things. to feel excitement. or happiness. or to express any form of positive emotion.
and i’m not sure what the fix is. but i think the ability to identify is the first step. it’s within me. i can feel. so the work is allowing myself to feel. opening myself up to express those emotions in a way so I can share them with others - so I can share myself. And all my guts, with others. and that’s the scariest part.
and until then, i’ll enjoy the HELL out of fries supreme while watching obscure horror movies. and trying out all of the hot dog vendors I can find.
happiness is stopping and staring, the first time that spring flowers start to flaunt their saucy selves.