Some days I’m in my feels …
I was to start this article with something funny, as I often do about things in life, to run away from really feeling.
I do not know if it is a human thing to feel weird, uncomfortable when we feel deeply? I do not know if its is just me or if everyone experiences those times when you know you cannot run away from feeling vulnerable… like when you hurt people you love.
May be I should have been a poet. May be I should become one, that way I can express myself with the deepest levels of my feeling without feeling like “it’s too much”.
I cannot really pinpoint when it started, but my earliest memory of faking strength when I feel anything but started at age 14. When we all reported to high school … and I may not know about others, but that is when I started being mean to people to really hide what I was feeling.
This was the time our schools also thought it premium time to send motivational speakers our way. You know, those motivational speakers who all said the same things “ You have to stand out. What makes you special. what do you stand for. What makes you stand out. What is unique about you? That is what shall make you stand out”.
I don’t know about you, but personally, instead of being motivated, I felt pressured. Every motivational speaker for me was like a reminder of how I was falling short. It felt like everything they were saying was a reminder of how I fell short. I do not know why, but I felt like the way the motivational speeches were delivered sounded to me like, “This is who I should already be by now…”
Once again, I cannot suppose to speak for anyone, but around this same time of reporting to high school is when I started feeling inadequate inside. In a way, instead of being positively motivated to be the best version of myself from meeting other people, that’s when I started hiding who I truly was. That was when I hid my curiosity so I do not look stupid before these other brilliant people. Instead of actually going ahead to do everything I liked, that is when this voice inside my mind got vicious, saying that I was a fraud.
In a way, each day , as as I presented the performed version of myself, the more I couldn’t report to th world as myself. Because this voice inside got bolder and bolder. It said the real me was revolting, unacceptable in everyway. that is when I started perfecting the art of presenting an acted version of myself. Ironically, in perfecting the performed person is when perfectionism also kicked in… You know? Perefctionism, that internal fight of refusal to accept anything short of perfect physically or spiritually?
I know many people do not open up about it, but may be many of us can relate to this struggle. That struggle of knowing who you want to be inside and out, but feeling like somehow you are not enough so you start doing things like faking things do not affect you when the very opposite is true. That temptation we all have caved into, to act like everything is okay outside when what you really feel inside is scared and may be even threatened and sometimes hopeless.
I think we have all been tempted to act “strong” when we are anything but. I think we have all at some point been showing “strength” outside when we are really crumbling inside. I think Brene Brown really is right when she says may of us would rather be “strong” than “weak”… and by weak here she means Vulnerable. It takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable because it means accepting your short comings. It like how you would rather have pretended you know certain concepts in Maths, or Chemistry or Physics, than ask and risk looking like you do not know. Yet in truth you do not know!
Beyoncé was indeed correct in singing “Perfection is the disease of the nation” in “Pretty Hurts”. Because in trying to appear strong is when we become weakened further. In refusing to openly and honestly and vulnerably say how we really feel inside, we actually get separated further and further from people. In our attempts to win people over by how “perfect” we are, so sure of ourselves, we push people further away.
The expression, “No man is an Island”… Now is when I am totally getting it. The saying is there and still commonly used because perhaps as human beings we ae actually good at making ourselves islands. We are really good at pushing people away. We are really good at withdrawing and alienating ourselves from others. We are better at avoiding people than at being accountable. As we become better performers of who we wish to be seen as, the less and less we are ourselves, and the less and less we can be surrounded by people too…. because people can only relate with people and not with performance arts.
As I said, sometimes I am in my feels. And in such times I let myself go and feel everything. and acknowledge the things I often distract myself from seeing. Like seeing when I have hurt my friends. Or when I have disappointed my family. Or when I have promised something and then I do not do it. In the past I would mostly be mad at myself for falling short of decency. So, once again, it was all about me.
But now. Now it is very different. Because when you see beyond yourself, you realize the pain you cause others. You see the disappointment your actions or omissions cause, you see the broken faith in you. You see what your high walls and strong shields ignore, the humanness of the others around you.
May be such realization is part of what “adulting” is. May be adulting is not simply the fact that nowadays we have to schedule even calls with our friends just to stay in contact…. May be adulting is also seeing where you need to learn humility. Not humility because you have necessarily been proud, but humility to grow up. Humility to understand that indeed “Leadership isn’t for children.”
Children can throw tantrums. They are selfish and have no idea. They only want to get what they want. They do not think about what their actions do to others. They cry to run away from responsibility sometimes. Faking tears to attract pity so they do not have to held accountable. May be children are manipulative, as we become older human children we just become better at the art of manipulating our desired outcomes out of people and things….
Once again, I do get into my own feels sometimes. And I think. And journal. And reflect. And introspect. And see. And feel. And cry sometimes… Yeah, I get into my feels.
May be if I were a poet I would get a free pass of expressing my innermost thoughts as art labeled, “Welcome to my therapy sessions… everything you see and hear here is one hundred percent confidential” Should you find it is so deep and messy and feely inside here… I could just ask you, “What did you expect when you walked I on my therapy session?” Haha, okay. To be fair, I have refenced another artist here, NF, his song “Therapy session”.
I am no poet though. I am just a wordy wordy being who feels and thinks deeply. I wish I had like this smart wordplay to conclude this piece, but I got no lines. I do not think I can call myself a poet. May be I am just human, and perhaps I do not need to be a poet to see such truth sometimes.
Anyhow, when I am out of my feels, I see more clearly. Not despite of my feels, but because of y feels actually.
May be you shouldn’t be so afraid of how you strongly feel sometimes.
May be your feelings are a guide to what is happening inside you. May your feels are your internal compass on what you may need to pay more attention to. May be in your feels is when you can finally be both strong and strong… Strong as in courage and vulnerability, and strong to see yourself go through life unguarded and come out actually stronger for it… more complete than before.
Once again, I go into my feels… so whatever you hear here, cancel not, judge not.
