It's Just Emotions

                                                      It's Just Emotions

   Today I did something I almost never do. I melted down. I cried the ugly cry as Edgar placed his paws on my cheeks and licked them away. Which, eventually made me laugh and helped me calm down. I am learning so many new things, new skills that I have yet to master. Growing up being told that my emotions were not important and that I was property, not a person really affect how, as an adult, I expressed myself. I am getting better at it. More secure in myself and also more able to identify and control my feelings. When you grow up with anger as a constant companion, yet never being able to let it out, it ferments. The more anger ferments the stronger it becomes. The more it rules your life. What was once a feeling of unfairness and then fear mixed with helplessness becomes rage. A wild fire that will burn through life if it is not quenched.  After I dealt with that fire, tapping out embers here and there, I had a void. A hollow place where it had lived almost my entire life. It is hard to let go of something you have carried through childhood. Like a ratty tatty security blanket. Other emotions were foreign to me.

  I had to learn the balance of becoming rightfully upset by something and that dark thing that had dwelled within me for so long. A growth. A tumor that sapped my joy. It fed on my dreams and shut out the world. Which left me more miserable than before. My protector was also my prisoner. Keeping me locked into a life of empty days and lonely nights. So, what did I do when I finally laid it down? Well at first I hid. Being emotionally naked is it's on kind of vertigo. Up is down and down is up and everything around you is moving way too fast. Completely normal things would send my into a fit of anxiety. It was as if having been repressed for so long, my emotions had decide to all be heard at once. I was happy, sad, angry and then happy again, in the span of an hour. It was exhausting. That kind of exhaustion that only comes from too many tears and raw hurt. In short, I was a mess.

 There really is no "Welcome to the world of feelings" guide. There is no coin they give you for passing 30 days without a melt down. Or 60 days without hiding in your dark room in the fetal position. It is all fly by the seat of your pants, make it up as you go along. There is no grand party or acknowledgment of the great accomplishment just staying in your own skin for the day. As much as I wanted to blend in, I also wanted to stand out. To take my place in this world. As soon as I was able to find where that was. I was really between gigs. My children were raised. The job market did not appeal to me. So what was I to do? Who was I now? Homer gave me the answer. Watching as this dear man faded away,  I saw someone to emulate. I would write it all down. I would let it all go. And then I would learned to be someone new. Someone other than victim, wife, mother. I would be friend.

  It was a daunting task. I loved talking to people about themselves, not about me. Too many mine fields there. But to be known, I would have to allow all my secrets to spill out. Let the chips fall where they may. Once I had done it I felt....clean. Healed. There came rushes of feelings. All of them new to me. I am still learning. Still identifying and cataloging them. I am no longer in fear of them. I am learning to trust myself. Feelings are normal.

  Now, I try to help others with their own feelings. Not in an attempt to hide who I am, but by sharing it. I have come to believe that all that I have experienced enable me to relate to others. It is a beautiful thing to take so many jagged little pieces and make something lasting and worthwhile with them. I rarely become angry anymore. I hardly slip up and cave in. But I still do it and I always will. We all do. It is okay to express a proper measurement of indignation for the circumstances. It is not okay to go bat shit crazy over nothing at all. I used to get into arguments over parking spaces, places in line. Anything really. I pushed people away and laid out a thick layer of hate tinged anger. I had a perpetual "do not f' with me" attitude. Silly, foolish me. I continued to feed that beast and then ringing my hands as it kept coming back for more. You see anger never gets it's fill. It is always starving, waiting at the pantry door growling for more flesh. More of my life gone.

  I know now, that they are just emotions. And like the songs says "they are taking me over". And that is okay. I love and am loved. I have hope and faith and a deep passion for the possible. The world is not as scary as I once thought. It is magical and delightful, hard and bittersweet. And I would not trade this journey for the world.