Today I felt:

Content
Anxious
Happy
Insecure
Overwhelmed
Peaceful
Suspicious
Lonely
Loving
Satisfied
Annoyed
Anticipation
Pensiveness
Inspired
Proud

And that’s the tip of the iceberg. What I’m learning about emotions is that they are meant to be felt, to be experienced, to be noticed and noted. They exist within your natural reactions, within your own understanding of your world. Your emotions are important. Your words, your body language, your choices, and the thought process you went through to make those choices – they’re just a few pieces of being human. Your emotions are a little bit heavier, a little harder to make sense of, but somehow sometimes the easiest to brush under the rug or shove to the back of some imaginary mind closet.

I compartmentalize. Or at least that’s the wording my therapist used last week. It’s simultaneously a strength and a weapon I use against myself. It’s great for decision making, running a business with your peers, planning, directing, executing. It’s great for being able to walk down the street eating an ice cream cone with a look of peace in your facial expression even though the last 12 months of your life carried chaos and hints of trauma – a few more words I learned from my therapist last month.

That doesn’t even include the first 15 years of having to grow up too fast around verbal and physical abuse. Or trying to build a relationship with a father who never learned how to even love himself.

I’m a doer. I do and then I do some more. It’s the playground I prefer to play in. Staying busy is easier than feeling almost anything. I don’t know if I’ve become so good at not feeling or if I somehow accidentally shut myself completely off at some point. Losing the remote under a couch that is too heavy to move in my current, fragile state.

But I am strong, and I do carry so many strengths. Although I somehow seem to forget how many “good things I’ve got going” in a simple blink of the eye – when things fall dark for only a moment, and I can’t seem to find the light switch along the cold walls I’ve built around myself.

I’m learning. I’m learning to feel and to let go. I am learning to remember so that I can stop pretending that I forget. I’m learning to live in my own skin and to understand I am worthy of love, including my own. I am learning my emotions, what they are, what it takes to feel them fully, and how to find a balance along the way.

Right now I feel apprehensive coupled with the excited thoughts of how important it is that I can even type that word out, that I can pinpoint what is happening inside of my heavy chest.

Right now I feel like I am alive.
Right now I feel like I am human.
Right now I feel.

And I am so proud of myself for it.