understand my emotions

I do understand my emotions – WHEN I NOTICE/DEAL WITH THEM. They are actually not that difficult to figure out. The hard part is dealing with them in a productive way, and acknowledging them in the first place.

An injured young cat followed my roommate home 2 weeks ago. His tail was dislocated, and he had some nerve damage (loss of bladder/bowel control). He was the friendliest little guy ever. We kept him in the basement and hoped that he would get better.

He seemed to be rallying, but then, in the past day and a half, he got sick – stopped eliminating – stopped eating and drinking. He still purred and wanted to be petted, but his little eyes looked tired and sad.

My roommate just got back from the vet and informed me that they had to put him down.

Pretty straightforward – not much to understand right? Just another stray who didn’t make it.

But I’m sitting here bawling anyway, and wondering why it is that I find it so easy to grieve for this little cat, and so difficult to grieve for the much-larger human suffering that happens worldwide every day. It doesn’t seem right.

I did get something back after I replied to his email (and by the way, my response was friendly but not fawning or desperate-sounding)...a MASS EMAIL. Not a stupid forward, but a mass email nonetheless. I hate mass emails as a rule, but even more so when I’m hoping for something slightly personal. Of course, now instead of fantasizing that something will come of this chance encounter, I’m despairing instead that I’ll remain “one of the guys” for the rest of my freakin’ life.

Dammit. I hate that I’m hoping for something more. I hate that my imagination is so quick to run away on me. I hate that I bellyache about what I don’t have instead of appreciating what I do. ishdiacs is totally right – this yearning thing is an addiction. I know it. I just don’t know how to stop it. I’m working to keep myself occupied, and there’s plenty in my life that I AM excited about. But…in the downtime, say, just before I fall asleep at night…I keep finding myself wishing. I don’t even realize that I’m doing it until I’m well into the story I’m telling myself.

I’m not happy about it.

The Buddhists have the right idea – desire IS crazy-making and sadness-causing. Is desire an emotion, or just a habit of thought? Or both? At this point, I’d really like to take a spiritual scalpel to mine.

So, seemingly out of the blue, a long(veryveryverylong)-lost object of painful and completely unrequited infatuation has resurfaced – contacted ME. Needless to say, I am a bit discombobulated. More emotion than you can shake a stick at.

Mostly excitement. But also…

Some fear – what do I say? How do I respond?

More fear – will I let myself get too wrapped up in this as I’ve done in the past?

More fear – am I reading too much into this? I am, aren’t I?

Then, unquestionably – more excitement. Big fat hyper 12 year old spazzy excitement. Which I must, must somehow curb if I am to respond in a non-freaky way.

I’m really upset – more upset than I realized – by this most recent school shooting in Lancaster County, PA. I’m so familiar with this type of one room Amish school, more so than any of the suburban high schools etc. that have been scenes of similar incidents. I didn’t grow up Amish, but I grew up around the Amish. My grandfather was Amish until his early 20’s. My dad teaches social studies to 8th grade Amish kids. In fact, he probably has students or former students that are closely related to the victims of this shooting. I betcha I know people who know the victims’ families. It’s hitting really close to home. I really don’t know what to do with these feelings. I’ve always been very good at insulating myself from the misery of current events. This one is getting to me.

What upsets me more than anything is the ages of the victims. Not that anyone deserves to be shot and killed – but these girls were 6, 7, 8 years old. It’s just horrific. What I feel more than anything is sorrow for the kids that weren’t killed or shot, but saw this happen to their schoolmates. What will their lives be like? How do you make sense of this? It just shouldn’t be.

Is this an emotion? I don’t know. I think it’s also action-oriented. But it’s the closest thing to what I’m feeling right now, that I can think of, at least.

My roommate is going through a lot right now. She just broke up with her boyfriend, and did it badly. She was hoping for something with another guy, but I sort of think that’s not working either. She’s suddenly realizing that she hasn’t really been single for any length of time since high school, and she doesn’t know what the hell to do or what to think or who she really is, in a lot of ways.

She has been talking to me a lot about it, and I’m often not sure what to say. She seems to think that I have all my shit together, but I myself know that’s only because I’m private with my grief and uncertainty. Inside, I’m afraid and unsure, too. I’m lonely, too. I don’t have any answers. I do try to answer her because she asks me, but I feel like all I’m doing is providing platitudes most of the time.

It’s hard, especially because I’m the type to let others’ sadness or upset throw me off-keel. I don’t know how it happens, but they rub off on me, or have before. So I have compassion, but I also feel myself keeping my distance somewhat, and I feel bad about that. But then I wonder, how can I possibly join her in her misery, and what good what it do?

My own sadness feels so unmanageable, especially when I’m sitting here at my computer, drinking a beer and listening to Steve Earle. Is this wallowing? Sorta. But I haven’t really let myself feel sad this way in quite a few years, and it doesn’t really feel bad…just sad. Not even purely sad, it’s not even my own sadness that I’m feeling, but the sadness of country music and the sadness of everyone that’s ever been disappointed. I’m crying a little and my throat is kind of tight, but it feels…good in a weird way. Sort of like coming home.

Lovers leave and friends will let you down
But you’re the only sure thing that I’ve found
No matter what I do I’ll never lose
My old friend the blues
- Steve Earle

My roommate and I have been talking a lot about relationships lately, mainly because she is currently ending a relationship of 2 years (for good reason) and also in the midst of a rebound of some kind.

In some ways, I envy her. She is a lot more proactive and outgoing than I will ever be. She makes me wonder if I will ever find another relationship, considering how much of a hermit I am. It makes me sad, kind of. I think more and more that I would like a family of my own some day, but don’t know how I would ever achieve it. I hate “dating”. I wish there was some way I could just be friends and eventually develop something more, but it seems that it’s difficult to be friends with people of the opposite sex. There always seems to be some sort of hidden agenda or unspoken hope for something more, either on my part or theirs.

Then again…there is a lot I like about my singleness, although sometimes it’s boring and lonely. I can do whatever I want whenever I want. My mind is not often clouded by the need to have someone, to snare someone somehow. I feel self-sufficient and confident that I can meet my own needs…usually.

Yet…I also feel cut off from love in a lot of ways, though I feel so much love from my family and friends and have so much love for them, too. There is some kernal of myself that I am holding back. Truly, I am terrified of sharing it, or have no idea how to go about doing so. I don’t know how to let it out, whom to let it out to, etc. I used to have no boundaries – now I have them, but I’m scared to breech them. Am I imprisoned by them, or just cautious and slow to connect?

Ball of confusion…

That’s what my heart is today…

On the one hand, I’m honestly really excited to be here. The city is definitely growing on me – I love the neighborhood, the weather (so far), my apartment. I am nervous but again, really excited to finally start classes.

On the other, I am really missing Colorado – the land, the people, and even the pets. Not being a super-social person (and not having a lot of spare cash at the moment), I feel awfully lonely. At moments, that is. Sometimes the lonliness goes away for hours at a time, but it comes back at inopportune times. I think part of it is that my roommate is from the area and also has her boyfriend visiting, so I feel a bit left out (even though she is quite nice and not excluding me from what I can tell).

Not a lot of challenge in understanding my emotions at this moment – they are pretty normal considering the situation. Occasionally I have moments of panic (what the hell am I doing here?), but mostly it seems like the right decision, although it’s a bit tough right now. I wanted to be somewhere that would challenge me, and that’s right where I am – challenged but not overwhelmed (yet).

Just heard a recording of Henson singing “The Rainbow Connection” as Kermit the Frog and almost teared up while sitting in the car. It’s an optimistic, dreamy little song, but it makes me feel so weepy. I guess I am still sad about Jim Henson’s death, all these years later. I was such a product of Sesame Street and The Muppets that he was like another parent to me. That’s an exaggeration, but maybe a godparent? Anyway, he had a huge influence on me as a child, and I still miss him.

This is one reason I think I stuff my emotions (esp. sadness); once I start feeling sad, or just nostalgic, it’s hard to turn it off. And often I don’t have the option of just sitting with my emotions and letting them run their course. Other times I just feel silly that I’m about to cry over a stuffed green puppet with a banjo…

Now that there’s less than a week to go, it’s really starting to hit me. I am sad to go. But more than that, leaving brings up all kinds of other more general sadnesses about the passing of time and the impermanence of everything. I’m sad about ageing, not because I’m sad to get older, but because I sometimes feel that I haven’t really moved forward appreciably. I don’t exactly feel like I’ve wasted my life, but I also wonder “what the heck have I been doing?”.

I had a good cry a few days ago. It felt really strange, because I haven’t really cried in quite awhile. Not sure where it came from; I was listening to music; certain chord progressions and lyrics will set me off at times. I was crying about leaving Colorado, certainly, but it seems to me that I was crying about other things, too.

One big one that I don’t acknowledge very often is the fact that I still mourn my disconnection from the faith I was raised in. I used to be one of those people that had a close relationship with Jesus, or so I thought. I miss the comfort I got from my beliefs at the time. In this troubled world, it’s comforting to believe that someone’s in control, and that things are happening for a reason.

But for better or for worse, I have a hard time taking refuge in that belief any longer. It’s not that I’ve lost faith, exactly, but most would see it that way. It’s just that it seems wrong to me to believe in something just because it makes me feel better. Believing that things happen for a reason seems to me to be a cop-out. If I accept that things are as they should be, what motivation do I have to make things better? Also, I have so many other arguments with the way Christianity is generally practiced that I don’t really think I can go back to it. Yet I haven’t found anything else I can embrace wholeheartedly to take the place of it. That lack of connection is painful.

Anyway, there is obviously a lot of mourning that I haven’t done yet, and a longing for that type of connection that I haven’t allowed myself to explore/seek out.