The simplified answer for me is yes. Emotions are unpredictable, sometimes coming as reactions to external stimuli, often the result of internal activities. There’s no real sure way to know how you will react to something or how you will feel at any one moment. I suppose it’s a matter of vulnerability.
To feel, to allow yourself to feel, is to be vulnerable to feeling something unpleasant or unwanted. Or even something desired by inopportune. But, to have any human interaction is to be vulnerable. Just plain living and breathing carries with it a certain degree of vulnerability and to shut yourself off to the emotion contained within that is probably not terribly healthy. If it’s even possible.
Life with restricted emotions is not a strategy for protection from pain. Well, perhaps it’s a strategy but, much like my strategy for showing people I care for them by finding things they are sensitive about and making mean jokes, it’s not a terribly successful strategy. I think that maybe keeping the bulk of one’s emotions distant from the moment, the reality where they present themselves is probably a way of living life with a reduced level of lifeness.
Now, I realize that I just used several versions of the word life and I even made up a word that isn’t terribly helpful or interesting and isn’t likely to catch on in the American lexicon and for that I’m sorry. The point I’m trying to make as I get less eloquent is that it would be madness to try and establish certain portions of life where emotions are to be avoided. But that’s what I do.
And I’m sure I’m not alone. I may be crazy but I’m part of a group. We don’t have a club with meetings or anything. And I don’t know anyone else in the group (or do I?). I’m just confident that I’m not the only person who’s slowly moved from just feeling emotions as they come and reacting to first logically processing internal and external input and then deciding whether or not to accept the emotions created. That’s normal, right?
So I don’t cry if something horrible happens but instead think to myself “that’s horrible, I really want to cry. Is now an appropriate time to cry? What will other people think? I guess I should maybe not cry. Or does that make me seem insensitive?” and by this point the opportunity to just feel has passed. And sure, then maybe at a different time I’ll cry about something that doesn’t really warrant it as compensation for the previous missed opportunity.
Forgive me, that example sounds sad. It works with all emotions, though. Joy, anger, passion. I didn’t think this was a problem. Some people deal with overwhelming emotions with drugs (both prescribed and not), others use food, and I suppose there’s the occassional person who works through them by talking with loved ones. And some people just ignore that shit, shut it down as much as possible, and feel less concerned about becoming overwhelmed by a moment.
I don’t know that I would say that’s been working for me, but it’s what I’ve been doing for a long time. And now I’m trying to do some tiny little play that only a small cluster of people will see and then it will be done with forever and my character has numerous emotional spikes where he loses himself to the moment and is just emotion and I can’t find any footing because I can’t stop logically working out what he’s dealing with and going through. My mind is the therapist asking “how do you feel about that?” when I need my mind to just shut up so I can just feel.
And now I don’t know if I’ve built up this distance from my emotional self for too long to get back to it. Or if I want to get back to it. It’s just a play. It’s just acting. That’s no reason to reevaluate my emotional engagement with the world. Except, I want to do well and I maybe want to feel without thinking. Maybe life is a good reason to reevaluate and this tiny, insignificant play is just the thing that’s making me look at something.
But, will I become a wreck? Develop an emotional hair trigger? Yelling at people, hugging vague friends or friends? Or maybe I’m just being dramatic.
LW
