In The Mess Of Our Emotions – Run, Sit, or Build

Story: After shutting off and shutting down,
I’m finally starting to put one foot in front of the other again.

Strategy: Instead of running from issues, sit with them. Face them fully.
Build something driven by the feelings.

Can we outrun our problems?

Instinctively, we would be inclined to say, “No, of course not!” At least, that’s the advice we would offer our close friends and family. But after an uncomfortable thought or feeling, how often do we find ourselves reaching for the next distraction?

Human rationality intrigues me, but more so the absence of it. I catch myself in these situations, intuitively knowing what I should be doing but choosing the opposite. At it’s worst, self-sabotage and numbing.

In the last three months, I’ve gone from standstills to sprints searching for reason and running from it all at the same time. A whirlwind of emotions leading me to a million places with no real destination. Mostly, I find myself frozen in a state of resistance and confusion, highly and horribly indecisive.

How do I put one foot in front of the other when I’m not sure where I’m even headed?
Or if I even want to be there?

Intuitively, I felt that I had stumbled into my dream – my believed purpose- and bringing it into fruition began to overwhelm me. Especially as I began to reflect, slowly watching as my college life drifted further behind me and new responsibilities of a full-time job and a place of my own had surfaced. After always living two steps ahead of myself, it was a bittersweet feeling I never expected to have. And with these life pivots, self-doubt began to re-emerge in my life.

A few weeks ago, a flood of emotions came over me in ways I had been resisting for months.

I felt a quick sudden urge to turn down the blinds, grab a blanket, turn on the TV, and blare a documentary on Netflix that would steal my mind away from the overwhelming feelings.

Just as quick, I had a moment of awareness. Of knowing that it wasn’t an innocent interest to watch a documentary (even though I would convince myself of it’s knowledge and goodness), but that I was numbing. Not nearly to the degree that I would have a few years ago – unhealthy ‘quick comfort’ food, sugar, alcohol, any bad distraction I could get my hands on- but still, I was searching for an outlet to steal me away from fully facing my feelings.

This last month, I’ve been more aware of this – and the piercing frustration that arises as I watch my unconscious numbing habits come to light.

Exhausted, I shut down and out the world around me. I started withdrawing from sharing myself – the open and vulnerable side I was beginning to love and live from. Stopped in my tracks from reasons and insecurities I was choosing to ignore, I was just waiting for time to pass- for the resistance and confusion to subside. But it didn’t. Of course it didn’t, I knew better.

So I grew quiet in contemplation.

Silence and sitting brought my fears and irrational thoughts to the forefront. As they arrived in the midst of my meditations, I would rock back into the sweet sound of a two-syllable word that had no real meaning to me.

What was meaningful to me?

This is one of the questions that continues to haunt and guide me. In the last few months, it served two sides: pulling me back into the circled chase of emotions, but it also granted me the moments of clarity I needed to find my footing again.

When I first began this writing, I was uncomfortable. The sometimes cozy feeling I would get while writing had transformed into deep agitation. I was painfully sitting in front of my laptop, dragged to this spot by my irritated awareness. I had forced myself into a space to write, to vent and healthily move through my emotions – and I was resisting.

Picking up my phone, typing in Facebook to the address bar, closing all tabs. Repeat.
Letting my mind attempt to run quicker than the words I could type.

It’s this moment though.. Right here.

Allowing the “bad” and “uncomfortable” to find their way to a home. The unworked and unfelt issues craving for a place to call their own, this time it just happens to be here on this page.

It’s something I see in all of us.

The urges to numb, trapping us into an unhealthy battle with ourselves. It’s what brought me here, to find a place for these words and emotions. We run from uncomfortable as quick as we know possible. Leading us in a never ending chase down an alleyway we thought we were running away from in the first place. But we are deeper and darker into it now. Pulled into the center of it, we must either practice ignorance as we grab for momentary distractions or we face it fully.

I wish I could snap my fingers, quickly heal us of our human tendency to numb. I wish I could make it easier, prettier -to sit in the puddle of yucky emotions. That we could learn to rest here, learn to love it here. In these moments, we strengthen our ability to love ourselves and others deeper, when it’s needed the most.

If the cure was truly at my fingertips, the rise out of the darkness would be less appreciated. Gratitude doesn’t typically coincide with quick fixes. My gratitude lies in the battlefield, the long and tiring days filled with or empty of emotions – sitting in contemplation. For me, the most transformative role in my healing, facing my emotions fully, is in the form of building. Being with my feelings in a creative space, whether through grounding my words in a writing, rediscovering myself in the stroke of a paintbrush, or designing a solution to a problem.

I’ve tiredly ran. I’ve patiently sat.

And now I build.

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The Empathy Mirror

I was lost within our words, between your story and mine clashing. Our blinded lens to each of our own perceptions. I looked at this mirror again, after the warfare – tasted the blood, the stained guilt. I saw myself in you again. But this time, I saw me differently.