In the Sadness

I don’t know what it is about today, but I am so stuffed with emotions right now. It’s so good to start writing.

I’m feeling really sad. It is the kind of sadness that burrows inside like a sharp knife and spreads itself like thick, warm mud throughout my whole body.

I just want to cry and cry and cry.

I think at first I would have said that I don’t know why I feel this way. It’s easy to say ‘I don’t know’ as the first response to big emotions.
Where did we learn that from?

Is it that we really don’t know?

Or that we weren’t taught to ask ourselves where our feelings are coming from?

Or that we expect instant answers and don’t have experience with allowing the revelations to move through us, though sometimes slowly?

The truth is, I do know why I’m sad.
We have recently had an experience where we were left out of something big. And I want to shake someone and cry and tell them how it feels. I think I’m also sad that being an adult sometimes means that I need to move through my feelings without blaming someone else.

When all I want to do is blame right now. I do.

I want to scream and tell them it’s their fault, and THEY were disrespectful and rude.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know how to handle being hurt by someone. I mean, there are some people (my husband included), where I can speak openly about being hurt. I can discuss it and move through it and we can both understand each other deeper. Then I can box it up in a nice little package, and discard it. Renewed and more connected with myself and the other person. But there are other people that never allow any feelings like that to come close them. They will viciously attack back, even if the intention was to address it in a vulnerable respectful way.

So what do you do with people like that?

With the ones that you don’t feel safe in sharing your feelings with?

And what I am learning is that it is okay for me to FEEL whatever I am feeling. That doesn’t mean that I need to PUT IT ON ANYONE. No one can MAKE me feel a certain way, I know that.

And yet, there is some sadness again.

Each time I write, I learn more about myself. I am learning that I appreciate sharing my feelings, even if it’s hurt and sadness. I appreciate sharing them with someone that is opening to hearing and growing and becoming closer. And for me, sharing, voicing, having a voice, helps me feel stronger as a human.

I think just hearing my voice reminds me that I am okay, and that I am not alone. 

So. It’s sad that there are people (only 1 or 2 now) in my life, that I still cannot share completely with. That they are maybe stuck emotionally and seem to be incapable of opening to vulnerability,
to connection,
to truth. And so something that bonds some of us, needs to be dealt with alone because I don’t feel safe in sharing. 

And maybe the more I get to know myself, and know that I grow through sharing, maybe I also am learning that not everyone does. And that I cannot make someone grow with me and my feelings. That me EXPECTING someone to give a shit about my feelings is also me not recognizing that we are all different.

That we come from different places.
That we need different things.
That we don’t see things that same way and never will.

So here I am, full circle, maybe dipping my toe in a place of compassion. But definitely recognizing that my expectation of other humans and their apparent short falls is actually MY shortfall. 

And for that, I am also sad.