Day 236 – Feelings (They’re Nothing More Than Feelings)

“And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair” – Mumford and Sons

Heard that song while I was sitting at Starbucks earlier today. The beautiful words… Third attempt at blogging today. Hopefully this one will stick.

Hello world. It’s 10:15 pm. It’s been a long day, full of changes. A day of struggle if there ever was one. Sometimes there’s no good reason for feeling down. You wake up and you had a dream that you can’t even remember, but somehow your smile is lost. Or someone says a thing, just a simple thing that triggers a bigger thing and everything seems ruined. You come home to your regular routine and realize that you can’t call the person that you usually call at 10:15 because they are no longer a part of your life and you feel down…

But what does it all mean? I mean, what is it worth, these feelings? How much importance should we give them? I hate when guys talk about women and they call us all emotional as if emotions didn’t mean anything. At the same time, though, if I based all of my actions on every single thing I felt, I would be a raving lunatic (even more than I am now).

I had a lot of breakups in the past few days. I know, it seems like I am perpetually breaking up with someone, even though it also seems like I never have a man. I’ve been on this growth thing for some time and there was a lot of stuff. There is still is. Patterns to be restructured. You realize that you just let go of some dude that didn’t give a sh*t about you only to replace him with some dude who doesn’t give a sh*t about you. Or you just left some apartment you don’t like only to move to some apartment that has the same issues as the last apartment you didn’t like…

And when you look around you notice that the only common denominator in the situation is you. There are definitely other types of people. There are definitely other types of apartments and jobs and lifestyles and religions. The list goes on and on. When my mean as*hole of a first love was trying to hurt my feelings, he would tell me, “Wherever you go, there you are”. And he was right.

We can run as far as we want, surround ourselves with whoever and whatever, clean out the house, cut our hair, make some money, lose some money, change religions, whatever, but I think that until we dig really deep and change some of the synapses that we have been programming into our brains for so many years, until we really, like, do a chiropractic adjustment at the root of our being, we will continue to recreate situations that have affected us deeply…

I’m feeling the grief of loss. I let go of someone I Love recently. He was as much of a friend as he could be, which isn’t saying much, but he was what I had in this city. He was who I ate dinner with sometimes and who I called at night. But he’s a substance abuser. I know. I know how to pick ’em. He was just one of the purest hearts that I’ve ever known in my life. When I’d come around him everything would become Love… But, because of his problems, he wouldn’t keep his word often And it appeared like he just had an addiction to being down and out. I understand those things. So whenever Grace seemed to be knocking on his door, he would run away and destroy things. And if ever we had a wonderful time together he would go MIA for a while and make sure he did something really destructive to balance out the good stuff . And although at times he was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever known and although his hug was pure Love, I had to let him go. ‘Cus I didn’t want to get used to the  sh*t that came with him. That unreliable, I can never count on you, my heart isn’t safe with you sh*t. That “we can never really have a good thing” sh*t. I just couldn’t. I’ve come too far. So I let him go…. But I miss him.

And of course on the same day that I let him go, some other blast from the past dudes hit me up online with some mean interactions… Trying to hold on. Maybe they just want to be wanted or noticed… I don’t know. In this moment, I don’t feel despair, though. I feel relief, like a weight is being lifted. I had been used to it, you know. I had been used to a love that hurts, and used to dysfunctional stuff. I had been used to just not ever being noticed or cared about by the guys I fell for. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the reason I fell for them was because they treated me like I didn’t matter. That’s what happens with patterns. We gravitate towards what we’re used to. Even today, as I was feeling sad, something in me felt comfortable, like this was a familiar thing, this sadness.

It seems like a catch 22. So, we build these unnatural patterns, this crooked spine that develops from leaning on one foot too much, but we don’t even know the pattern is building, and then when we finally recognize the pattern, we have to fight and work and do extra stuff to correct it??? And it’s probably gonna hurt and make us uncomfortable? And on top of that we don’t even know if all the work we do is gonna make us straight again?

It can be daunting, but I am not daunted. I have been crying all day long but I went to work. I got work done. I worked on my script. I put in a new job application. I ate and drank water. Just because you feel a certain way doesn’t mean you can’t do things. And you don’t have to fake like you’re all happy to get things done. Your feelings won’t always be the same. They are good indicators of what’s going on in your inside life. I think it would serve us well to acknowledge them as we are making assessments, but sometimes there are things that are more important than feelings.

In this case, it’s progress. Sometimes we are not strong enough and we have to go back to the bed or the drugs or whatever keeps us numb and away from confronting these horrible feelings. But sometimes, like now for me, we are strong enough and we don’t have to give in to our fears and tarry in situations that we KNOW are not good for us. Sometimes, like now for me, we are faithful enough, and we know that as we put in the work, even slowly, things must get better. Sometimes, like today, God gives us wisdom and we let the tears fall as they may. We work anyway knowing that we are tilling good soil. We pull out the weeds and let the empty spaces fill themselves up. We are God’s children, you know? All of us. And this is our garden. These are our lives. And they are good lives. Yes, they are good lives. At last…

Day 236

Feelings (They’re Nothing More Than Feelings)