Saturday, May 1, 2010

My Mind Wanders to the Past, Day 121

Today a friend of mine gave me a much needed massage. She needs bodies to practice on, as this is a career she decided to pursue. I'm grateful for the complimentary service :) She was really accommodating and said we can talk or it can be done in silence. As much as I love to blab, we love to blab, this is a rare opportunity for me and I want to take advantage of it fully. So I opted for a quiet experience.

There's something revealing about being quiet with your thoughts. Distractions at a minimum and a relaxing rub down in a comfortable environment allows me to focus on thoughts I usually try to ignore or suppress. Today is a beautiful day outside. I just got a free massage. And what do I do? I get on my laptop and start typing away indoors, hiding from the sun and dwelling on my past. How pathetic is that?

But I came to a realization very recently. I may not like the way I feel, but it's still how I feel. Desiring something else doesn't make these feelings wash away. I can't turn away from them, pretend they aren't there, and just return after the wind blows them away. I lived a life most inhumanly as possible and it backfired on me when years and years of feelings I've neglected came pounding down on me. When it became unbearable and unavoidable, I tried distracting myself. Crappy idea!

While it's important that we don't let those feelings consume us, doing other things channels my compulsion to avoid the pains I should face. So now even a year later, I'm dealing with feelings I should've gotten past but I haven't. During the massage, I started thinking about him. I was so relaxed, though, that I didn't try to buffer it or ignore them. I think it's important to create an environment where I'm comfortable enough to explore and deal with my feelings because I feel like if I dealt with them earlier, I wouldn't be in this position now. I would've addressed what's still lingering inside of me.

This beautiful weather isn't helping, either. It makes me want to go to the beach. I've been bugging my friends about going for some time now, but today I realized that I really want to go with him. We never got a chance to go and that missed opportunity still eats away at me. Who knew after all this time that I'd still feel this way?

I've decided to not trip about why I feel this way. I'm just going to accept it. Sure, I think it's lame. But it doesn't make it any less true. Denying it has blown up in my face. I'm going to face reality this time. I'm slow when it comes to emotions, so I guess this makes sense.

He's right. I obsess too much and focus on my perceived rules and guidelines. They're nothing more than socially-conditioned ideologies, and clearly my feelings exist outside of that realm anyways. I want to work towards not feeling this way. I was worried that if I acknowledged them that I'd be compulsively attached to them, but the opposite has happened. I've become compulsively desperate to avoid them at all costs. Spider webs have formed around them, so I believe they're gone until I take a closer look.

I jinx myself by believing I'll handle something poorly, avoid it, and completely fail to realize that processing something badly is better than not processing it at all. My distorted criticism self-sabotages me from healing and usually my assessment of something is flawed anyways. I don't write to be compulsive; I write to release myself from compulsion. If I write that I think of him and miss him, it's not trapping me in those feelings. The more I express those thoughts, the more aware I am of them and I think that's important. I shouldn't experience shock attack.

Feelings exist because they're meant to be felt. I shouldn't have this predisposition that feeling a certain way is wrong, leading me to censorship or coercing me into manipulating a different feeling. How twisted is that? How did I not see this before? Clearly I need to be more intimate with my thoughts to become aware of these basic obvious realities. And writing things down helps me understand myself. I thought it mostly just gave me clarity and maybe it does, but maybe as I become more daring and open about what I write, I'll discover something deeper, myself.

2 comments:

  1. Girl, don't trip off that trifflin ass nigga. You know you deserve betta. I'm gonna keep an eye out on dis blog cause home girl, its like you inside mah head.

    Go on do yo thang!

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  2. Thank you! It's much appreciated. If what i'm going through is relatable, then I can only hope that my insights give you the sense of comfort I hope it offers me so that I can move towards a more positive direction in my life :)

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