emotions

December 24, 2024

Rainy Day Ruminations

I like when I try to write a post that comes off more as a school essay than an artistic piece pouring forth from my soul. I prefer the ones that come in uninhibited. They exist to exist and serve no purpose other than to impart how I’m feeling in the moment. Think of them as literary snapshots. Little photographs I can look back on, if I ever decide to re-read anything I’ve previously posted, and say to myself “Man, I was feeling it that day.”

Today I started some ridiculous piece about how if the government banned tiktok it would do a huge disservice, other than breaking it’s only fucking laws. With the app I have learned so much about myself in this very roundabout way. Most of the videos that scroll across my FYP have to do with trauma. Haven’t a clue why… But the algorithm knows all, I suppose. I never thought I was one who had responded negatively to it. However one evening, wading the sea of my thoughts, it occurred to me that I have.

Growing up I was a very emotional child. My parents never were one to stop me from feeling them. The outside world on the other hand did not agree with this parenting tactic. So for all my mother’s efforts to make me emotionally mature, the populace had other machinations. And they will do everything to make sure they perpetuate the myth that everyone will and should fit into a mold.

As I grew up, my peers and mentors would tell me that I was being too emotional or over-dramatic. Whatever I felt or expressed was brushed aside. As a result, I chose to hide my feelings instead while suffering in silence. Regardless of my attempt my body refused to hide anything. It manifested as something else. Always. I imagine it is the same for most people. It’s why some turn to addictive substances. It’s numbing. Only then can we ‘fit.’

In the early days of dating my husband, I was already spiraling into alcohol addiction. He saw it VERY clearly. He even made a deal with me that if I stopped drinking, so would he. So, I got sober. However, without recognizing the trauma I was drinking to escape I instead to turned to sex. Having a chemical dispenser in my head, ever at the ready to dole out my own make of dopamine, was much easier to conceal and carry out.

This behavior was my husbands and my biggest hurtle. I regret so much of my past and how much I hurt him with the lies… He’s forgiven me but I can’t. I don’t like that I ever betrayed his trust.

This is the moment where I realize that this is why I write. I clack out my thought because I have all of these “big emotions” that society otherwise would tell me I’m being annoying or I need to get over. Here, on this blank page, I get to be myself. I can share on an open platform where someone, just maybe someone, will read it and I will be validated. I realized this last piece today. Finally all the points connected and I understood.

All it took was my husband dying.

So many people have graciously given me the space to share my emotions. Ones in which I thought I did not feel. Every day I worried I was some kind of monster, as if I was happy he was gone. Even though I know that is absolutely not the case. It is just that I have spent my entire life pretending to have no emotions because I was “too much” for some. And obviously I wasn’t meant to be around them, because the people who genuinely care about you will not feel that way.

When I hide my emotions they always, ALWAYS manifest as anger. Absolutely every time. Boys/Men are allowed to have anger. Anything else is unacceptable. The biggest flaw in that, especially with me, is as someone who feels things deeply my rage is worse. It’s compounded with my anguish/sadness/grief with the anger I feel with all of those in my past that told me I was too much and at society for forcing me to be a “man.” What was just a small fire has turned into an inferno.

The one person who understood all of this about me, who let me have my fits of rage, with patience, sympathy and grace, is gone. I am once again left to handle all of my feelings alone, or in blog posts, because I will always fear isolating myself with my feelings.

Merry Christmas.

November 16, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 39 – Chop Suey

I am a rage monster. There is no other way to describe it. At some point in my life I was told, or decided, that showing any emotion other than rage was a sign of weakness. So whatever I may be feeling I re-route into that. The one exception is whenever I feel happy. Yet, at times, even then it pops it’s head up.

My husband has expressed repeatedly that the only thing he wants for or from me is to find a healthy way in coping with my anger. And I genuinely try. I am very self-aware that my anger effects those around me. Trust. I am fully conscious of the mood shift around me, because then I become even more angry from the shame I feel ruining everyone’s time. And I won’t allow myself to feel shame, so it fuels the rage. It’s this horrible cycle that, once I am caught in the spiral, I cannot get myself out.

One of my healthy coping mechanisms is to go for a walk but most of the time I am trapped in situations that do not facilitate that type of exercise. More often than not my husband wouldn’t allow it anyway because his choice is to talk it out. Every time. I have mildly adapted to it, but when he’s constantly with the brother-husband who gets uncomfortable being around the uncontrollable anger, it makes it way worse.

It’s gotten increasingly worse since my mother passed. I attribute it’s meteoric rise to me not managing the emotions attached with that loss. What really messes with my head is that in the wake of her death I actually feel more relief than anything, which makes me feel like a fucking monster. Then that throws more fuel into the rage-fire.

I have a therapist that I speak with about every other week. I sit there and gab on-and-on about everything that’s happening but I’m usually not angry at 9 A.M. Rest is something that soothes the overwhelming emotions. So, the opportunity I have to discuss it is lost. I either forget and get so caught up in “getting current” that it is never addressed. In the very rare moments I have brought it up, he wants me to work on “exercising.” Girl… I love the therapy trope, but that isn’t an option for me. Once I get home after work I immediately jump into caring for my husband. Sneaking off to the gym for a quite “sesh” on the elliptical isn’t doable without relying on a brother-husband/part-time caretaker who is already frazzled.

When looking at how my life has played out the last three years, my anger is “justified.” At the very least, understood. However, how I choose to or choose not to handle it is not. I am a monster and I am making everyone’s life miserable. I feel like Tia Pepa in Encanto. I’m always a monsoon.

This isn’t anything new. Like I said, somewhere I learned this habit. I don’t know when or where, and I have tried to look. Regardless of it’s origin I have to stop. I just don’t know how.

Music is one outlet I work through emotions. It can be healthy, but other times it also devolves into self-harm. This song, Chop Suey, being one prime example.

This song ushered in my true goth phase. On the heels of my break-up with Sergio, I had gotten really close with my friend Greg. Really close. At school, I was a Junior and he was a freshman and I moved my lunch so I could hang out with him. When we weren’t at school we talked for hours on the phone every day. For spring-break he accompanied my parents and I to Lake Tahoe. At some point we took a trip to K-mart and I found this CD amongst the mess that was their music section. Little did I know that this would become my anthem for the next few months.

One afternoon, while my parents were out gambling, Greg and I ordered an adult movie on the tv and I ruined our friendship by taking it to a different place. (Blowsies for the nosey bitches.) That one action fucking ruined everything. (I bet that’s where my weirdness about friendships becoming sexual comes from…) The rest of the trip he was quiet as fuck. I knew then that he was having an identity crisis, but I didn’t know what to say to help him. When we got back from spring break he gave me a note, in between periods, that said he was a Christian and couldn’t hang out with me anymore. (He claims that it didn’t say that but… whatever.) I was devastated. I broke down in second period so much that they sent me to the office and they didn’t know what to do so they sent me home.

After that I was so filled with sadness that it re-routed into rage. I listened to this CD repeatedly. I sang/screamed along at the top of my lungs so frequently and with such fervor that I gave myself laryngitis. I may not have been a cutter, but I was definitely someone who self-harmed. I just did it in the gayest way possible, by singing.

Now whenever I feel copious amounts of these emotions I’ll put on this album and rock the fuck out. By the end I have exerted so much energy into the volume of my voice and all that entails that I am exhausted. And I am left with a sense of peace.

Until the moment I find a real-time habit, this will have to be my go-to. That and journaling. Nothing makes the feelings dissipate quite like writing/typing everything out.