Letting myself feel things is something.
For years and through traumas (I don’t like that word because I don’t think things I’ve experienced are traumatic necessarily but people have told me that’s what it is so whatever, let’s roll with it) it’s been easy to stop an emotion in its tracks before it becomes overwhelming.
I mean I don’t know what I’ve been thinking is going to happen, like a giant sinkhole’s going to open up and swallow me whole, but “feeling” has always been limited, like there’s an emergency valve before I get too far down that road.
Today I got into bed and I started crying – not a sad, pitying cry, but a joyful and surprised cry. I felt grateful. I felt grateful that I have people who care about me. It’s been so easy to look at people and fear where the road’s going to end, feel like the rug is constantly being pulled out from underneath me, like I’m constantly ceding territory to the destructive and all-encompassing forces of fate.
But I’m happy, and I don’t know what it’s like to feel this way for extended periods of time. I know what it’s like to be functional, and distracted, and fleetingly joyful, but I’m just gratefully happy. It’s a little scary.
It’s an emotion that, for once, I don’t want to stop in its tracks. I’m feeling it. And it feels – well, it feels.
