Feeling
Understanding vs. Doing
My favorite thing about myself is that I don’t need anyone.
I live by myself, pay my bills, dine out alone, and spend whole days not using my voice. This sometimes startles me, so I greet myself; I sound the same.
My least favorite thing about myself is that I need people.
The ease of being alone has not quieted the human desire, perhaps the need, to be known deeply. I work hard to squash that need, to tell it that all it does is complicate my life. It makes me less easy, jagged, harder to swallow. It makes me think of this picture I saw on instagram by @thelittlebluedood:
The illustration is right, it’s quicker for me to get help. I’ve done that several times. Each therapist is unique in their specificities: race, age, location. Yet, they all come to the same conclusion:
“You need to feel more.”
They all reference it in different ways. I need to grieve more, want more, share more, love more, and stop living by these rules that protect me from people. They tell me that in the business of building walls, you keep out the bad and the good.
I know this already. I’ve read the books, seen the professionals, and surprisingly have not been prescribed medication. They ask me why I work so hard to not feel. I say something like I worry I’ll lose control or I’ll never come back from anger if I go too deep. They ask more questions and eventually I say,
I don’t like feeling, because I’m bad at it.
It’s really good to not need people. If you do it well enough, people will begin to think you are invincible, always okay. If you go above and beyond, you’ll think you’re always okay. Even when your body says something else, even when your journal entries write in circles and patterns. You’ll convince yourself that everything happens in a vacuum and that you are not capable of making the same mistake twice. If you’re an expert at it, you’ll begin to skirt accountability, not wanting to see how you play a role in the way life has panned out.
I like to excel.
So naturally I’ve become an expert at not needing people. I choose to have my friends around, I choose to love and be loved. But I can’t need any of you, because I tried that whole needing thing with my parents and…never mind that’s for my next therapist to hear.
I feel the urge to cry and run for the nearest door to shut. Once in conversation with a close friend, I felt myself get emotional and said I needed a minute. I got up to leave. He asked,
“Do you want a hug?”
“No!”
The act of feeling is the admin work of living I hate. I procrastinate, ask for extensions, and see how long I can go without addressing the pile of papers stacked in front of my heart. When I do get around to it, I regret I took so long to handle it and then do it all over again.
I’ve felt a lot since being home. I finally see the difference between understanding something and doing something. When sitting in front of therapists, I can say it all without flinching. Look at my pain, look at how well I hold it. You can barely see it, right? The mediocre ones praise my strength and let me vent. The good ones ask me to say it again, but with feeling. However, even the great ones who ask you questions to stop your patterns, can’t get you to move from understanding to doing.
Being home has been a rigorous course in doing. I can understand why I don’t feel, I can examine it, make excuses for it, give myself grace, and then not feel again. But until I do it, until I feel, understanding is just an exercise in intellect. Until I move that understanding into doing, I’m just standing still.
A month ago I felt myself shutting down, making each of my days feel like a dream on autopilot. Instead of excelling, I grabbed my journal and wrote:
“I think I’m doing it again.”
I had a real reason to fall back into my pattern of not feeling, a moment seen by my family. But I stopped myself and decided I won't sit here and examine why, I will just do. I cried and told people how I felt. Then I went back to working out everyday and wrote in my journal without fail for the following weeks. My body was the driver, not my mind. The stack of papers reviewed one by one and the backlog of my heart cleared out.
Feeling is really hard, I’m still rusty at it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do it. If I want a shot at getting that human desire fulfilled, I have to risk imperfection.
I have to need you.
