To All Depths

The Quest to Feel Everything.

Often when I feel something complex or painful I amplify my internal turmoil by struggling against the feeling.

I shouldn’t be feeling this.

Why am I feeling this.

I am better than this.

I am weak.

This isn’t me.

The other day, I had a conversation with my mother and something that she said really stuck: “Why don’t we let ourselves feel every extreme emotion. Happiness is great, but what about just nervousness or anger?”

Anxiety. That word has always had such a heavy, undeserved connotation  in my mind. I’ve always thought of it as something lesser, something that hinted at an obsessive, unhealthy line of thought, something avoidable, something that was simply not a part of the true, strong me. Naturally, reaching young adulthood, I began to feel “unreal” fairly often and that made me frustrated as hell.

I feel a debilitating yearning to be able to express some beauty, to show the love and wonder at the world that I felt on the inside but can’t seem to exude. If I could just show the true me, the me that laughs easily and moves in tandem with the vivacious chaos of time…

That is me.

So for a while I rejected anxiousness, disappointment and long months caught in a repetitive cycle of thought as sub-me, an inferior version. In the process, I fell out of love a bit with my present self.

I’m experimenting with the conclusion that it’s fine to be terrified of life. Think of all the glorious extremes it inspires.

Think also of all the shallow or fleeting fancies. I don’t personally struggle with any form of clinical anxiety–sometimes I just get nervous or scared.

If I can attempt to define myself through all depths, that’d be an intriguing and liberating adventure…

Bi-weekly, I will publish a post, each grazing a depth of the human experience. I would love to welcome any guest bloggers or ideas–please comment or contact me! Look out for this series, marked with the HermitCrab hexagon.

Thanks for your interest!

What makes some emotions acceptable–allowed to drift with us through the day, analogous or parallel (hence unthreatening) to our identity, while others are rejected with an assured, knee-jerk intensity?