“You don’t just get to leap from bright moment to bright moment. How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation, and how equipped you are for the weird demands of creative living. Holding yourself together through all the phases of creation is where the real work lies.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
The other day I was telling a friend about a situation with a guy that had me all sorts of upset. After explaining to her what had happened, she asked me the most simple, most straightforward question… “How do you feel?”
To which I regurgitated a slew of quotes I had read and felt applied to me in this situation…
“Oh, in the end I will become stronger from this situation…”
“The universe has plans which do not always align with mine so I must simply trust.”
And my favorite here, “I cannot always control the situations in my life, only how I react to them, so I am choosing the most positive outlook on this.”
Oh, how very zen like of me, right? My friend must have assumed I had binge watched Dr. Phil all day, or had divulged in a marathon of inspirational videos on YouTube.
In clinical therapy, I believe they would label these responses as healthy and aware, but this isn’t therapy; this is real life.
She looked at me with a weak smile and ever so gently said, “Okay…but you didn’t answer my question, Leah. I asked you how you feel. How do you feel?”
Feel? How did I feel? I hadn’t even given myself a chance to feel, out of fear. I knew it was painful…so I had chosen to skip right over that feelings part of the equation.
“You know what? I actually feel…awful.” I looked straight at my friend almost in a trance. “I feel rejected and empty and lonely. Yeah… I actually feel pretty shitty.” And then the tears started to fall, to which was immediately followed by a profuse apology.
My friend grabbed me, hugged me, and said, “There ya go. At least now you’re being real.”
It occurred to me later the importance of this seemingly insignificant discussion with my friend. I learned three vital lessons that day, three lessons which I hope to hold on to, and which I want to share with you.
First: It’s okay to not be okay. We live in a fast paced environment showered with instant gratification. Want something and don’t have the money? Charge it. Done. Need information immediately? Grab your phone, Google or Siri is right there to help. Hungry but don’t want to leave your house? Order in. Honestly, almost anything we want is right within reach and requiring the minimum amount of effort on our part. Am I shunning this lifestyle and saying we ought to live like cavemen in order to experience true suffering? Hardly.
I simply think that we have been accustomed to feeling great so much of the time that the immediate moment we feel any uncomfortable emotion whatsoever, we are very quick to think something is abnormal, that something is wrong with us for feeling this way. When we feel any sort of negative emotion, we are quick to squash it immediately whatever it may take, including acting just fine. In an era where social media displays all the triumphs of life all portrayed through filters of perfection, it’s no wonder we begin to doubt ourselves if, God forbid, we begin to experience any sort of painful emotions.
But guess what? We are not robots. We are humans. And being so, we are created to feel a wide spectrum of emotions, including pain and stress and anger and any other “icky” feeling. Do we have to seek these emotions out? God, no. I don’t think anyone desires to feel any of these negative emotions, but be okay with them. You don’t need to be in love with these feelings, nor master feeling them, but simply be okay with them. Because these emotions will visit you at one point or another in your life, more than likely on numerous occasions and you must remember that it is okay to not be okay.
Second: Never be sorry for your emotions. I realized that the moment I started showing real emotion with my friend, within seconds I was apologizing. I do this often. I also realized my friends do this often with me… “I’m so sorry for unloading…” or “I’m sorry I’m such a mess.” It’s as if we are apologizing for being human. A myth we are shown in society is that we always must be happy... happy, happy, happy. And if not ecstatically happy, that’s fine…as long as you are not outwardly showing any sort of intense negative emotion.
I don’t know if I am the only one that somewhere along the line in life, I picked up the notion that expressing any painful emotion was a sign of weakness. I molded and cemented the idea that if you can’t hold it together, you must be on the verge of a meltdown and something must be wrong with you. I’m here to tell you that’s bullshit. Complete bullshit.
If you are a person that can swiftly package up all your negative emotions, deal with them and neatly put them away where they belong…all the more power to you. I’m not that type of person. And honestly, I feel safe in saying I highly doubt the majority of the human population is this type either. Emotions are messy. Growth is messy. Real life is messy. We are not meant to suffer alone. If God, or Buddah, or Allah (or whatever suites your fancy) meant for us to deal with life alone, they would have put us on solitary little islands where no interaction was needed whatsoever. Drop the idea that you should never outwardly show any emotions, or that doing so makes you weak in any way. This idea is false and it also makes for a shallow being, lacking in the most important necessity in life: human connection. We are here to help one another. You don’t ever need to apologize for your emotions, no matter how messy they may be.
Third: Be true to whatever you are feeling. If you’re not feeling 100% you don’t need to put on a show. I’m not saying to sit comfortably in self pity while playing the victim card, but honestly, some days are just…blah. And you know what? That’s okay. Real life is not an Instagram account or a Facebook profile, real life doesn’t come with a filter so everything looks shiny and pretty. Real life has some hard shit. Some real struggles. And some real pain. Because it's life, it always has had these things, and it always will. These are the moments you don’t see as status updates, or in the beautiful pictures; they are the moments where growth takes place and real strength is formed.
All those things I was initially saying to my friend, when she asked how I felt, they sounded great. But they were not truly what I was feeling at the moment. Time takes time.
So, did I become stronger from the situation? Yes. Did I learn from the situation? Yes. Did I need to take on the most positive mentality I could? Yes. But all of this took time. I had just had my heart hurt and wanted to fast forward through all the pain so I could avoid any sort of uncomfortable emotion. I wanted to be okay immediately. Unfortunately, that’s not how life works.
You must allow yourself time to actually feel. You must let yourself swim around in that uncomfortable territory because it’s the only way to actually get through it. In life, if you slap a Band-Aid over something, I promise you it will not go away. It might, temporarily, but eventually it will come back. Until you face the situation head on, it will not be solved. I firmly believe this. And the only way to heal is to actually feel.
I hope my message is not misunderstood. I’m not saying every second of every day we need to be lighting candles, while holding hands discussing our feelings. But I am here to tell you there’s nothing admirable in bottling your emotions up or putting on a show to prove that you are just fine. There is nothing strong in that. You have absolutely nothing to gain in suffering alone. Absolutely nothing.
Be true to whatever you are feeling, painful, hard, uncomfortable or new. Let yourself feel exactly what is in your heart, and remember, that all the bad with the good, is what makes you truly alive.
