Say Hi to My Feelings

Sure I’m mad—but behind the anger, frustration, and hatred there’s only sadness. The other layers aren’t even real. I made them up to cover it up. Boredom is rage spread thin, and sadness is grief the same way. There’s just so much love inside me, and it’s got nowhere to go from here. I’ve got nothing to do with it. I spend my days watching it die.

I hit Replay like a madman. It tricks my brain into thinking we’re working on it. In the background there’s always me asking, ‘Can you still love me, despite of this?’, where this is me, followed by a pause. I wait to hear yes, like a blessing, like permission to rest, like forgiveness for being the way I am. But the answer remains radio silence. It sounds like no even when it doesn’t sound like anything at all, and it’s making me bitter and mean and impatient.

Deep down, I know there is no fix. So when will this pass? When can I go back to feeling myself minus the need to apologise for it? Can my love at least stop dying before I get a chance to redirect it as still love? Because it keeps dying on me, and all I see around me is dead love, and all I feel inside me is the need to bring it back to life.

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Where do I go when I need my heart held? Where do I go when I need a safe space? Where do I go when I want to be carried home? And most importantly, where is my home this time? Can you find a new home somewhere other than where you came from, or is that the only place that will let you return without trying to kill you? It’s so wild out here. I keep thinking I’ve found my home, and then it turns into some kind of hell.

Once again I find myself needing to return but having nowhere to return to. I start walking and they clap for me, but I haven’t got a clue where I’m going. I want to stop and ask for directions, but I need that reassurance like food, water, shelter, and love. So I thank them with a smile and keep walking, because if I stop, they stop with me, and then without me.

I don’t know what I’m running on, but I’m running—through the motions, spinning of all the plates, disconnected and confused. I’d kill for the kind of gentle strength that allows me to be soft, but it’s nowhere in sight, and hasn’t been for so long that I fear it’s gone extinct since the last time I thought I saw it in someone.

Helping hands do not come when I start asking for them, I know that. It means I am needy, I bring trouble, I am not fun and light, so helping hands go and wash themselves clean of me. Ironically, they are always there when I am good, and I swear they always look the same. They always look like my next home.

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I know the signs. When I lose interest in others, I lose interest in myself. When I don’t care about what’s going on around me, I don’t care about what’s going on inside me. I’ve been here before. Brief pauses, moments of uncertainty, fear of the future. These are all phases and they pass, and soon I’m back in the game, catching up on everything I missed. Only they’re driven by feelings, by inadequacy, by fear. This time it’s driven by nothing at all. From the outside, I’ve been here before. From the inside, I haven’t.

The good doesn’t feel good and the bad doesn’t feel bad. Nothing feels in any way, and I no longer want to have control over anything. The world can take care of itself. I don’t feel like looking after it anymore. If it wants me in it, it can open its own doors this time. And even then, I’m not sure I’d go through them. I’m not sure I’d go through anything right now. The doors and windows are closed and sealed. Nothing comes through; no more sadness, no new joy. I’m dangerously close to emotional burnout, and I have no idea how to stop it or ask someone for help.

I read about emotional blockages and that may be a nice term to explain it. But knowledge is power up to a certain point; at this point, it’s just that. Knowledge. I don’t feel anything, and I’m grateful to my mind and body for making it all not feel so heavy, but they also made it not feel so light. I’ve never been numb before. I’ve been in all kinds of ways, but never numb. I don’t like it, but I also don’t care that I don’t like it. It’s a paradox I’ve never lived before, and I’m not sure how to navigate it now. I just am, somehow, in the middle of it, and it’s all a little surreal.

I’m not one to say ‘I don’t know’ often, and when I do, I’m anything but satisfied. But this emotional rollercoaster has somehow left me kind of emotionless now, where it’s all been a bit too much and my mind has shut down. Nothingness has always been very uncomfortable for me. I fidgeted around until I got things going again, and again. But now I don’t know if the fear of the unknown has gotten so strong that I don’t feel anything anymore, or if I just don’t feel anything anymore because I’m tired of feeling afraid of the unknown.

I have always been a firm believer in knocking on the doors I wanted to knock on. I made up my mind quickly and tried everything to get what I wanted. Wandering aimlessly down the hallway, not knowing where to go, waiting for a door to open for me has never been my thing. Right now, I am not even wandering. And when doors, any doors, open, I do not care if I am invited in. I do not want to knock on anything or go anywhere, and for the first time, I am comfortable like this.

Sitting in uncertainty has always been my very own version of hell. I have never been one to just go with the flow. I always had to know what the flow was, where it was going, and when it was going to get to where I wanted it to go. Now I do not even go with the flow, the flow goes and I let it go. I have completely distanced myself from it. It can do whatever a flow needs to do, I have no desire to do anything to change his course.

The fire has always burned within me, even when it was reduced to a spark; now there is no spark. And it’s strange, this feeling, or rather the lack of it. How it spills into everything and manifests itself everywhere and eats me up and I let it. I wonder if one day it will go away. Maybe it’s the only thing I care about. Maybe it’s the only thing I want, even if it’s just a little bit.

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I love you. You are ok. Welcome back. Let’s be real here—you are too alive for this. Storm if you must, to find your calm. Don’t worry about them and what they might think. They don’t know that this rigidity is a sign that there’s a wound underneath, and they don’t have to.

Big sighs and soft smiles, you’ll get through it like always do, and regain some sense of rationality and calm. I’ll hold your hand every step of the way and learn to meet you with tenderness more often, because love must stop being a question mark in your life.

Change feels sticky and anxious. I know this. Internal safety has nothing to do with external circumstances. I know this. When you show up tense, hardened, and closed off, it’s because you’ve had to turn what they call the masculine energy back on to compensate for the lack of it, and that’s the most exhausting thing in the world for someone who’s always wanted to just be. I know.

But look at you, energetic and wild, burning and craving, how the hell did you think you were going to stay that way? You may never sleep on yourself again when life feels small for a moment in time. Self-love is reverence for life, and life is the only thing that looks more like an exclamation point to me. You’ve got this. You do. You’ve got everything.

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In between all this, there was so much good, I swear to you. So much good. I wish I’d taken in more of it, too. I’m going to try. I’m going to try so much harder. I love this messy life so much, and if I’m ever bitter, it’s because I so wish it loved me just as much—but sometimes it does, and when it does, it’s worth all the chaos.

‘I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life.’ – Anaïs Nin