Over the past month or so, my emotions haven't been what you'd exactly call stable.
Now, I've always been an emotional person, a much more emotional than average person. I still cry every single time I watch The Lion King when Mufasa dies. Every time. If you haven't figured out from just reading the blog in general, you certainly should've figured it out during some of the situations Office Boy and I found ourselves in. (I'm thinking this one in particular.) Basically, I cry a lot about a lot of things and I never really know when I'm gonna cry or why I'm gonna cry or how hard or how long I'm going to cry. It happens often and I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me that I have such a difficult time controlling my emotions.
But for all of my normal crazy emotions, my emotions have been even more unpredictable over the last several weeks.
For example, twice in the last two weeks I have started sobbing over my cat peeing somewhere other than his litter box. Not just crying...sobbing. A little over a week ago, when my cookie bouquet from my big sister arrived, I started balling in the middle of my kitchen. Three times over the hurricane weekend while watching random episodes of The Office, I started sobbing completely out of the blue. On Sunday, in the middle of the church service, I started heave-sobbing. (If you're unfamiliar with heave-sobbing, it's when you sob so much that you have a difficult time breathing and so you start heaving every time you take a breath.)
I've apologized to a lot of people over the last several weeks as well. I'm sorry my emotions are so unstable. I'm sorry I feel this way. I'm sorry I can't seem to stop crying. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
But a few days ago, I had a realization.
I don't have to apologize for my emotions.
Emotions are a biological thing. They're not something we choose and they really aren't something we can control. They just happen. It is completely normal to feel emotions and there is nothing wrong with feeling emotions relating to a particular situation.
The problem with our society is when people are emotional about a situation, we tend to do one of two things. We either tell them that their emotions are obsolete or we tell them that their emotions are wrong.
When we tell someone that their emotions are obsolete, we give them the message that feeling an emotional response to something is not normal. You see this most often with men, but I've found that it's happening more and more with women. Men are told that feeling emotions that lead to tears is "girly." But now girls are being told that if they show emotion like that, then men will think their weak and heaven forbid we be perceived as weak or feminine. The result is a lot of people with a lot of emotions who think there's something wrong with them because they don't know what to do with these emotions because for years they've been told that having these emotions is not a normal thing.
In addition to being told their emotions are obsolete, I've found that people are often told that their emotions are wrong. Men are told that feeling sadness or crying-related emotions is wrong because they're men. Instead they should feel the "correct" and "manly" emotions like anger and rage. When someone experiences the loss of a loved one, often in the Christian community I think the message that's portrayed is, "You shouldn't be sad that they're dead because now they're with Jesus." But that doesn't negate the loss and the natural response to loss is sadness and grief.
I've felt a lot of emotions over the last few weeks. Sadness. Loss. Grief. Confusion.
Eventually I started to feeling irritation, frustration, and anger, but not at Office Boy. I started to feel those things toward other people who seemed to be telling me that my feelings of sadness, loss, and grief were wrong. I shouldn't be so sad to have lost him. I should be happy because I'm better off. I shouldn't be grieving. I should be angry because he was a jerk.
Ironically, the person that has been the most supportive of letting me feel my emotions the way I want to feel them is Office Boy himself.
The day after we broke up, we had a long phone conversation. He told me that he knows that a lot of times people send the message that feeling emotion is a bad thing or needing to go to counseling to process through things is a bad thing.
"Don't let anyone tell you that what you feeling about this is wrong, Sarah," he said. "Feel what you need to feel and don't let anyone tell you to do otherwise."
And so that's what I'm trying to do right now.
My head and my heart are in a battle right now and probably will be for a long time. And I will be sad for a long time. I will be hurting for a long time. I will be grieving for a long time. I will be confused for a long time.
But eventually, maybe in six months, maybe in twelve, I will not be so sad anymore. I will still hurt, but it will only be the tenderness felt when a scar is hit in the wrong way; not the intense pain of a fresh wound. I will process through my grief and learn from it. And I might still be confused, but eventually, even if it's not this side of heaven, I will not be confused anymore because I will be able to see God's purpose through this situation.
But until I get to that point, I'm not going to apologize. I'm not going to apologize for the tears. I'm not going to apologize for the pain. I'm not going to apologize for the grief, the confusion, and the hurt. Because that's normal. There is nothing wrong with me because I feel emotion so strongly. And there is certainly nothing wrong with me for feeling emotion in general. It doesn't make me stupid. It doesn't make me worth less. And it certainly does not make me weak. It makes me human and that's all.
In fact, it makes me me. My tender heart is something that makes me uniquely who I am. My tears over Firefly and The Lion King and books and stories and happy things and sad things make me the special person that I am. And though my lack of control over my emotions sometimes frustrates me, I am proud of my tenderness. I am proud of my ability to feel because, at the end of the day, I would rather feel so much that it hurts than not feel anything at all.
So stop apologizing for your emotions. Feel them and feel them deeply. Because the way you feel emotion is one of the things that makes you uniquely you. Don't let someone take that from you. Be the person you were meant to be. Feel things the way you need to feel them and embrace the person they make you.
