No One Is Coming
I’m going to try to write as honestly as possible. It was hard for me to bring myself downstairs and grab my laptop. But my mind was racing with thoughts and I felt myself looking for ways to fast forward until I can be distracted again or asleep. I managed to wake myself out of mental looping it seems.
I found someone on Instagram tonight who said some stuff I really felt compelled by.
I think that what I’ve been learning that I have in common with everyone is emotions. I really had no idea that we all had emotions and they were fundamentally what create our reality. So as I’ve started to connect with people more deeply, I didn’t know what to name these sensations I was having. I have no frame of reference for them. So I’ve often wondered if what I was sensing was an aura or a flashback or magic itself. I thought it was some kind of spiritual 6th sense and I have been terrified about what it was that I was sensing. Could others tell I was sensing it? If I feel it, do they feel it? It turns out this spooky inner spookiness was my feelings….
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what the fuck.
like, it’d be nice if someone told me where those were found or how they were felt. seems like shit you should be required by law to be informed about the same way you should have rights to understand your sexuality. Which, honestly, there doesn’t need to be rights about it. We’re just talking about rights cuz some idiots went off and told some other people that they were Humaning wrong. They’re not rights. Rights are a response to original lies. You already KNOW how to be human, how to be you. You were born knowing how to be you. You never FORGOT per se. Someone told you that you were humaning wrong. You’re not. You’re having emotions. And those emotions make sense, even the big ones because of big scary things. Big anger = Big pain. It’s not a moral thing.
Something’s up in my life that I’m not going to talk about here. But it is ripping up my neural pathways. It’s a total bulldoze fest on my brain. I think it may be all about feelings. I was given some really bad information about feelings. Could it be that simple? That and feeling like I couldn’t trust myself and therefore couldn’t take action in my life. That I feel and that I can choose. I can stand in these huge waves of intense emotions that can knock me down unless I stand planted and choose not to be overwhelmed completely by them and let them pass through me. It’s being lost in feelings of fear, confusion, that I experience an internal crazy brain that is incessantly chattering to itself about whether it’s insane or not. But maybe it felt insane because it had no idea to expect to find embodied emotions underneath all the masking. Emotions are very real. Thoughts are very real. And only you experience what you’re experiencing. You’re alone with your emotions and your thoughts. Only you can feel them, only you can give them meaning, only you can hear them, only you can report them to others with words. Emotions are not words. It needs to be known that more than any other pointing, the pointing of emotion words to emotions are very much just pointing. Because the construct projecting into our minds representing the idea of an emotion word is nothing like the inner storm and burn of our biological, original, primary experience and language of life. As beautiful as language is to express ourselves, the sensation of emotion is that much more rich than language could ever represent. And maybe when I felt connected to god, I was connected to my emotions, like joy.
Right now, someone I love is having a very conversation with their loved one. It is such a courageous conversation. It says, “Now, I need you to get uncomfortable and listen to me because I have something I need you to know finally”.
I watched a video of a guy who goes running every morning at 5am. He does that because he hates running and he hates getting up early. He does it to set the tone with his relationship with himself for the day. That he’s going to make choices that are good for him. That triggers for me thoughts and fantasies (rolling in movie mode) of starting tomorrow to run every morning (meh to 5am). Of having a very firm but loving relationship with myself. Not letting myself lean on quick comforts so chronically. To have emotional control. I cringed when he said “emotional control”. Something inside me goes, “NO! Do not let them get you to try to control/hate/doubt/modulate yourself again!” But another part of me is tired of always giving in when I experience discomfort. Can I find a way to create a firm parent within myself? So I am not controlled by my emotions? Now that I know where they are, what they feel like, how they interact, … just generally the nature of emotions,… perhaps I can manage them and feel like I’m the thing experiencing but making choices. My emotions are the storyteller but I choose the adventure. Could that work? I guess then I question how do I make sure Firm Parent doesn’t become the Brain Nazi? Well, I suppose the Firm Parent would be educated on how emotions work. Brain Nazi just wants things to be ordered and right. Emotions are not ordered nor right. They just are and they inform us of our external situation and how we are receiving it internally.
Discomfort is out of vogue.
No one is coming to save you from yourself.
That’s another thing this running dude said. No one is going to be able to save me from my own mind, from my own internalized victimhood, from my fears, from my behaviors, from my pain that I perpetuate upon myself. Maybe this is the next step. You have emotions. And then you work with them and decide the kind of person that you want to be. You get to create yourself. Could that be? That I can choose who I want to be? That I am not necessarily destined to behave the ways I do because I do behave the ways I do? I feel like if I have a compulsion, I must have OCD, right? But maybe I have choice? Could OCD be partially as bad as it is because we are not taught we have emotions and that we have choice?
This is where this is some confusion for me. I guess, when I think about choosing, I think about hearing thoughts in my head walking through reasoning to make a decision. But,… that is still just thinking and reacting. But choosing would be about hearing the reasoning thoughts, noticing the urge to react according to the conclusion of the reasoning, and pausing to have an opinion about the information (the reasoning and conclusion) that have been reported to you. What do you think about the reasoning? What do you think about the compulsion that is being suggested? What other factors do I need to consider? Is there a larger perspective I need to take? That feels like choice. It’s thinking from a level above automatic thought. And automatic thought isn’t just careless reactive action, it is rehearsed. I would say automatic thought and reaction is where masking happens. You aren’t aware of the thought nor in control of the reaction, it just happens and so you assume this is how this works.
I wasn’t nurtured to be resilient in life. I wasn’t challenged to grow and was often protected from the consequences of my choices so I never really learned how life worked and how to wield my will to get what I wanted in my life. I was successful according to the standards I internalized from culture. But did I want any of that? Or was I playing the game on low risk? It’s like part of me was trying to get us to be a grown up and another part of me was a very dysregulated child.
It seems like learning about emotions and being able to interpret them is what is really going to give me a boost on my mental health. This whole time I’ve just been trying my hardest to improve my mental health without personally understanding what emotions were.
OK, I think I want to be done now? This is where it gets tricky? How do I decide that it’s time to be done writing? Am I thinking about quitting because I got distracted on my phone and don’t feel the writing flowing anymore? Am I thinking about quitting because I’m actually tired? Am I thinking about quitting because writing just isn’t doing it for me in terms of catharsis compared to the soothing experience of TV? Am I thinking of quitting because I’m pretending to parent myself? I don’t know how to decide these things. I get overwhelmed with all the options and perspectives in my head and then scared that I can’t seem to make them stop or get organized. So I seem to forcefully swipe left on my thoughts. Like saying “nevermind” to myself. This has happened for a while. Sitting here, writing it out, I can see the issue clearly in front of me and realize that despite seeing it, naming it, putting it into words, there is still enough of me left to observe it. I guess I am afraid that some of these scary brain things that take up so much space in my mind, if I put them into words, there would be nothing left of me.
Sometimes I feel like I should simplify what I’m writing about. That people who want to celebrate who I am will read it but not understand it and feel awkward about me. I wonder if that’s the internalized feeling I got from my mom. It’s been hard for her to relate to me my whole life. I know that she loves me. She has shown it with her time and attention and kindness. But she has never really been able to relate to me. Which is unfortunate because I think we both wish we could relate to one another better. Maybe we have a second chance to find out how to relate to each other. I have experienced relationships that have burned to the ground, at least in the way they were, and then rebuild based on new information and new connections that are more authentic. It’s never the same as before, but it’s almost better in some ways.
Maybe this next stage of life, after becoming acquainted with my emotions, is to manage and wield them. No one else controls me but me. How about that?
Feels like I should add pictures or something or apologize for it being so… what? heady? philosophical? non-linear? I keep forgetting what I’m supposed to be apologizing for.
