What if?
After rereading my last post several times, I realized that there was some pretty heavy duty stuff there. So I have set about trying to stop and be still several times a day. Then I write down the thoughts that I have that come from that. And do you know what has come up? Nothing but, “Man, I have a lot of emotions buried in here! No wonder your exhausted, your caring around years of feelings”. Okay, so maybe the first step is to recognize that there is alot there. I thought I already knew that, but we’ll go with it. The question I always go back to is what has made me a runner?
I had a situation happen in my life this week, that I didn’t even give thought to it and bam I was running away at full speed. Not until someone ask me, “how is that so easy for you to deal with”, did I realize that I had ran. It is that automatic for me. It is almost like my motto is ”Problem-Solution-Done”. That does not leave much room for feeling anything. So, it appears to the outside world that you really have a handle on your emotions, (ex. how is that so easy for you?) because you are able to deal with things in such an orderly fashion. When the truth is you have dealt with nothing, but made a swift exit. Maybe that is it, maybe I want to appear to have a handle on my emotions and that I am in control of the situation and by all means I don’t need anyone’s help to deal with it. Asking for help? Are you crazy? That would mean you were weak and didn’t have it all under control. Now I feel like I am getting somewhere.
I come from a family of folks that need to appear to have it all together and never ask anyone (even eachother) for help. We have faced lifes greatest challenges with a great handle on our emotions and in an orderly fashion, indiviually. A friend of mine wrote down his feelings after attending my father’s visitation service when he died eight years ago. This friend has know me and my family very well for many years and I thought his insight was spot on. He wrote:
“Standing in line watching Tiffany tonight was like watching someone greet guests at a dinner party. There she was with that smile on her face being so gracious and attentive to whomever she was talking too. You never would have guessed that her dead father’s body lay two feet behind her. It was like watching her go into the zone of ‘I can handle this, so that my emotions don’t make you uncomfortable’. Never thinking that these hundreds of people were here to support her in her grief, it was as if she was supporting them in their’s. I was surprised that when she saw me in line, our eyes met, and she began to shake her head no. I didn’t know if it was “no, I don’t want to see you” or what she was feeling that made her shake her head at me. She gestered to me to skip through the line and when I got to her, she hugged me and began to weep as she should have been doing all along. The “no” was ‘I can’t put on like this anymore, please help me’.”
My friend was right that I was so far from dealing with the present that I went into autopilot. If the sudden death of my own father does not shake me out of my autopilot of “show no emotion”, then I have got a long road ahead of me. I could write it off saying that I was in shock at the time, but the thing is that I really never let the loss hit me. Oh, I have had my moments of tears, but not a season of grief. I would not even know how too! The only reason that I was able to let my feelings show to him, was that there was a long relationship of trust there and I knew it didn’t matter how I acted…he was there for me.
I have noticed lately that I am so ‘put off’ by people that ‘put on’. But, the thing is that I do the same thing. I may not put on outwardly with the happy, happy, smile, smile – but I still put on inwardly by not feeling whatever it is that I feel in a particular situation. It has gotten to the point that it is frustrating me. Why am I this way? What is wrong with me? Am I cold hearted? How do I tap into my emotions? I am beginning to think that I fear tapping into them, because what if tapping into them caused me to lose control over them? What if I become an emotional, weeping, crying, wailing mess on the floor? What if I lose my grip of keeping it together? What would happen if I felt…out of control? Control, control, control….the root of it all.
