Feeling all the feels

I’m feeling good and bad. Im feeling okay.  I’m feeling all the feels.

I’m feeling better about me, about understanding myself and my personal growth and that side of things. I’m making slow progress, but it’s still progress. I’m getting better at recognizing my automatic reactions and taking a moment to pause and probe and reflect. I’m learning to be okay with myself and treating myself with the same kindness I would extend to someone I care about. 

Music and weed help. Hard alcohol doesn’t. I need to remember that alcohol is a DEPRESSANT and since depression is something I already struggle against, it’s not a good idea right now. Weed somewhat calms my anxiety and helps to slow my thinking processes down so I have time to reflect. I feel my creative thinking increase and it’s a good time for me to read, learn, contemplate, and work on my relationships. The downside is that it slows down my body and makes me feel lazy and physically unmotivated. It is good for the creative and philosophical work, but not so much for physical work. I have a lot of both to do at the moment, so I’m trying to find the right balance between the two. With the quarantine (because things may be opening back up, but I’m anticipating a wave of new infections in the next month so I’m staying put) and a couple of weeks before my summer school class starts, this feels like an appropriate time to be slowing down. After all, I just wrapped up the most stressful and crazy semester ever and moved a whole household of things and two dogs 250 miles away pretty much on my own. I just need to remember that I will need to speed it back up again after a week or so in order to be prepared for what’s coming up. 

I feel heartbroken and scared about all the shit happening in the world. I experience flashes of anger, but it’s more sadness and fear. I’m sad because so much hurt is happening and it feels like our country is ripping apart, all while an infectious disease is silently spreading and hurting in ways compounded with what’s tearing us apart. It just makes my heart hurt. I hate that I feel like I’ve had to distance myself from some people I care deeply about for what I feel like is... I struggle to end this sentence. The right, necessary, and urgent thing to do? Our “moral imperative?” Something I believe would help to heal a lot of the hurt in our country if we could just move forward? All of those things, but they still don’t quite seem to capture it. I struggle with my words, but I’m trying. 

I’m trying to remember there are positives that come from what feels very negative. A friend shared this story with me on Facebook this morning when I said something about the world getting scarier:

Allow me to try and spin that,

When I was a kid I was running barefoot through my house oblivious that I had stepped on a nail that had gone straight through my left foot.

At first it was itchy, so I scratched. Curiously as I looked down after feeling something hard I saw what was bothering me. 

It was then that I felt the pain. And then of course fear set in with it.

However, I needed to.

 I can't walk around with a rusted metal stick inside me. 

So as my father yanked it out and I felt the sting of the passing, somewhere inside of me I had wished I never knew about any of it.

But it was there, even if I hadn't realized it. And if I had not recognized it, well who knows how much more harm it could have caused.

And then they bought me McDonald's, so like that was cool.

I have hope that these are growing pains and things may get worse, but on the eventual way to getting better. 

Another one of my positives is I feel good socially and like my connections with some people are deepening and helping me to continue growing. I mean that with regards to friends (virtually, of course), not dating. (Dating is not a priority right now; friendships and personal relationships are, especially my personal relationship with myself.) 

I’m super grateful that (so far, at least) I haven’t had any issues with disrespectful comments or argumentative, yet closed-minded, people responding to my posts. I try to always pause and consider my words and their potential impact when posting, especially things that can be construed as political or divisive, but I’m not perfect and my emotions get the better of me at times. I see other people who have acquaintances, if not friends and family, commenting some hurtful and nasty things and it shocks me and again makes me feel so fortunate that that hasn’t been my experience. I greatly appreciate that I can be part of a network made up of people with such varied backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs. I don’t know if I have just been very fortunate in the people I have met in my life or it’s some reflection of me, something I’ve done, or simply tending to connect with like-minded individuals. Probably it’s all of these and then some, but mostly Facebook’s algorithms 🤷🏻‍♀️ Whatever the reasons, I’m grateful.