lovaliss's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - I often feel guilty for having feelings and emotions. I scold myself for feeling and I think this is partly why I pulled away from too much emotional intimacy in the past. I perceived emotional intimacy as a weakness, as a vulnerability, as something to be ashamed of, something to avoid. I think I always had a sense of emotional warmness towards friends, but always with a simultaneous guarded caution--which I think came off as a sense that I withheld the deepest parts of myself, kept many parts of myself secret and private. Over time I'd open up a little bit here and there, often in response to other people's pain and suffering. As a result of this withholding, I let go of some people I genuinely loved, and still love, will probably always love, because I didn't have it in me to be that kind of brave. I've been working on not scolding myself for feeling the past few years, but instead trying to just be mindful of my emotions, and noting how I feel, when I'm "feeling." I don't know if it's familial conditioning--patterns emerged from "generational trauma" ie. my grandma losing her mom when she was a kid and her dad's reaction. Which was to take everything that reminded him of her and put it away in a trunk and never talk about her. There is a family story about my dead great-grandma appearing to him in the night shortly after her death and telling him that he had to let go, that he was holding her back with his grief and she could not move on until he released her. I never knew him, he was dead before I was born, but he never remarried and raised all 9 children on his own. Or if its more, or equal parts, or all parts social conditioning. Or I wonder if my shame over feeling is just my own thing I've picked up in response to the social conditioning. It's possible it's my reaction as a woman to a patriarchal and sexist society; to try to distance myself from feelings and emotions and emphasize my "rational and logical" intellect that has been prescribed socially as a masculine trait; and thus a superior trait. To adhere to feelings and emotions is to often be perceived as "crazy," and "crazy" has been ascribed to the feminine. It might also be a reaction to Mormonism, which emphasizes "feeling" a lot to equate "knowing something is true." Since I recognized the majority of my "confirmations of truth through feeling" throughout my life were actually responses to my grief over my brother, and the "truth" was often the easiest thing to hear to appease my grief or any existential angst over death and loss of loved ones, I think I have adapted a heavy skepticism on top of what was already there for "feelings." However I think a total rejection of "feelings" is a mistake--and a patriarchal one at that. Patriarchal in the sense that it dismisses any validity for self-knowing, self-truth, and self-intuition, which I think is necessary to adhere to. Even in nature we see animals survive off of instinct, off of feeling, off of a sense that danger is near or present and they must leave or gear up for a fight if they have to. Dogs can predict when natural disasters are coming, like earthquakes, or when their owners are about to have a seizure, etc. But then again, maybe all of this rambling evidence is an attempt to rationalize intuition; in order to gain legitimacy for feelings and emotions because I don't think they are legitimate just on their own. It's possible, in fact that's probably true. But the point of all this is to say, a close friend texted me asking how my holiday was. My first instinct was to respond "It was good!" But instead I decided to be honest, to not be ashamed, to not say that it was "just good!" Instead I said: "My holiday was pretty good. I always have a little bit of a hard time going home and holidays are always a little bit sad. My mom has pictures of my brother up everywhere and it seems like holidays kind of emphasize the empty space, highlight that we're missing one table setting and trigger 'what if' thoughts. "What would it be like now if he had lived?" "Who would he be?" "Who would we be had we never lost him?" etc. There's no guarantee things are worse because of it or that anything would be better had he lived. I suppose its the not getting the chance to know that haunts. But is always good to see my nephews and laugh with my siblings. They're really cool."
7:35 p.m. - 2012-11-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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