I Don't Like Emotions

“I don’t like emotions.” I tell myself as I can feel the corners of my eyes burn from trying to hold back those said emotions. As my eyelids try in vain to hold back the impending flood, I begin to replay in my mind what has brought me to this point. It is a silent movie playing all of the top hits in the very unpopular genre of feelings and emotions. If reviews were available for this particular highlight reel it would read like this, “while presenting a rather ordinary, boring life the main character seems to find herself in the most peculiar of situations that would seem like absolute fiction if it wasn’t for the fact she has the receipts for all of those strange interactions”. I honestly do not know how I end up attracting the people and uncomfortable situations that I do into my life. I like to think it is because I am a kind, sensitive soul that offers a safe harbor to those who need one. But that is often taken advantage of or abused or exploited. Some believe I go seeking these situations and I have some kind of subconscious draw to people who will mistreat me. I assure you, I do not. In fact, I tend to keep to myself for this very reason. Too many times I have been burned by people and the chaos they bring me into which, I should note, I am a willing participant in that chaos. I am aware on some level that I am about to be swept away into a whirlpool of chaos not of my own making. But that is my weakness. I want to help. I see someone struggling and I feel I need to help them. Sure, that can be noble, but it also slowly deteriorates a person’s soul. Well, it has at least deteriorated my soul. So, I find myself pulling back and building walls around me to protect myself.

It turns out, walls and isolation are useless against emotions. The heart still feels, and the soul still aches to fulfill its purpose. Once again, I don’t like emotions. But if we are to have emotions and have to express them, couldn’t we at least have an efficient way to do so? Once the damn breaks and my tears are free to trace the contours of my face, the emotions won’t be satisfied with that. No, they will insist on creating such great force to pump gallons upon gallons of tears from my eyes that they will become puffy and red. Try having a firehose blast out of your eyes and see how great you look. Then as a fun bonus, the nose always feels left out, so it too wishes to help drain the great basin of emotions. My nose becomes so red in the process I could lead Santa’s sleigh. Yes, emotions aren’t satisfied with their release unless they know that everyone will know you just had a full-on breakdown. No pretty crying. Just pure, unadulterated crying. It is just the cherry on top of an already insulting endeavor.

I can’t blame emotions though. That is what they are there for. No, the true culprit is the reason, the root cause of why you need to flood your face. I mentioned I am a sensitive soul. Something I have denied my whole life, but the evidence points to the contrary. I am also a soul that keeps to herself. I purposefully keep to myself to protect myself. However, if you ask for my help, I am there, 100% committed to helping you. And that is where I seem to get into trouble. 

To me, the world is a beautiful place with a lot of hurt people. Hurt people hurt people and healed people heal people. Unfortunately, I have come to realize that many people don’t see the world this way. I have spent years working on myself, learning to love myself, and most importantly forgive myself. That last one is a massive work in progress. Through my healing journey I have had to face the harsh reality that many people have not even begun to acknowledge their pain and how they project that onto others. What that also means is that I have found myself repeatedly on the receiving end of their pain and projections. As a reminder, I do not seek this out or seek this type of person. And yet, they find me minding my own business, but willing to help. 

In my adult life I have had the whole spectrum of hurt people cross my path. There are those that have an inferiority complex and feel threatened by me (which continuously surprises and amuses me for I find myself non-threatening and somewhat invisible). Then there are those that have so much anger and pain in them that they need a target to unleash that onto. The egotists and narcissists are always fun to deal with … if you enjoy inauthentic people that wear a mask until one day you accidently bump it slightly askew and reveal the hideous soul underneath. Yes, a spectrum of the ugliest parts of human nature. I used to be, unknowingly, very impacted by my interactions with these types of people. In the beginning, I hadn’t learned the cold, hard lesson that not everyone is kind. I hadn’t learned that people would mistake kindness for weakness, and I certainly hadn’t learned that when I revealed my vulnerabilities, there was a very high chance of them being weaponized against me. So, I ended up not just receiving the verbal abuse and gaslighting but embodying it. I assumed I did something to deserve to be treated that way. I forgot how powerful I was and how much worth I have. Something that I’m pretty sure we all experience at some point in our lives (probably multiple times). There was another issue that helped to pave the way for me to turn on myself, I couldn’t find enough beautiful souls beaming their light to offset the darkness of others. And because of that, I started to forget the world holds all types of souls and there are angels all around us. I also forgot that I had a choice to be part of that army of light soldiers.  

On my healing journey, I never thought I would gain perspective on one particular aspect and that is at the end of the day, tearing ourselves down, allowing others to make us feel inferior, and the hurt we feel really doesn’t matter. Not truly. The sacrifices I made to try to please others or to earn their approval, which was only a figment of my imagination, were all for not. I could have kept my self-worth and still ended up exactly where I am today. There were many gallons of emotions spilled during that time of my life and for what? It didn’t make people treat me better. It didn’t advance me in my career. All it did was break me. I reached a point where I assumed that I wasn’t enough. That I did something wrong. Why else would they treat me like that? All it did was leave me with a long healing journey to embark on once I became brave enough to fight for me and the kind, sensitive soul I knew I was truly.

I can handle being broken. We are all a little broken. Yes, I have healed quite a bit from that time in my life, but there is always work to be done. I am fine with that. I have made peace with that. What I find I can no longer stomach is assuming I can’t join that army of lightworkers until I have healed myself completely. We are never fully healed. But more importantly, if I was completely healed then I wouldn’t have the empathy that is needed to help others. My light would not shine as brightly if I didn’t have my cracks and scars for the light of my soul to escape out of my body. If I was healed, then I wouldn’t feel the burning in the corner of my eyes where emotions are trying to escape. Those tears are evidence that I feel, and I care. Yes, I don’t like emotions, but it appears they serve as a reminder that our souls are yearning to be seen and more importantly, felt. I have life coursing through my veins if I have those pesky emotions. “I don’t like emotions” I tell myself as I fully know that I do, in fact, like emotions.