This Is Your Reminder to Breathe
I spent part of the morning reading over some old text messages I hadn’t looked at in years. It was an effort to explain myself to myself in a way that probably only makes sense in my head.
But I have been trying very hard to mash some feelings down instead of actually work through them. They’re not bad feelings, but they’re there. And I’m not really one to let things fester.
(Unless, of course, you count the times I bottle things up, until I can’t, and then blurt them out in an absolute torrent. I have tried, over the years, to break that habit. But I’m afraid it’s a feature, not a bug. Oops?)
I’m a person who is pretty much always in touch with my feelings. I know what they are. I don’t really shove them aside anymore. I used to be very good at that, because I used to be very good at forgetting my own needs and putting other people first as if it were my job. (Unhealthy. Don’t do that!)
I’m not that person anymore. And I haven’t been for a long while. But the interesting thing about feelings is that they sometimes point backward, and you find yourself reacting to something that is not really the same thing in the present. But it has conjured not an old ghost, but an old fear.
And I haven’t wanted to look at it too closely, because ugh. No thank you. But you know how sometimes the call is coming from inside the house? It’s me. I’m the house. Riiiiiiiiing.
Having sat with the feelings this morning, reflected on them, I understand myself a bit better. Which is really all I can ask for.
Fears are tricky things. Slippery, menacing, sometimes made entirely of shadows. But sometimes, also not. And while I may not face them right away, I always face them in the end. Sometimes, kicking and screaming. Sometimes prompted by something else that makes me go what the fuck is wrong with me? And the answer is nothing and everything, and no I will not elaborate.
As a friend often reminds me, I sometimes forget to breathe. Literally and figuratively. Just…inhale. But eventually, you have to breathe out. Or, you know, pass out.
So this is your reminder to breathe. Life is complicated and messy and bizarre. And sometimes, the past comes to call in strange ways, but it’s not really the past. Just an old fear.
Sometimes, we collect them, like little bits of glass melded together, as if we can make something beautiful out of them. And maybe we can. Maybe we can take the hard bits and put some color into them, so that they are not shadow.
Fear always has a source. Anger too. Every emotion has roots, darlings. You just have to look at it, dig them up, figure out where it all started. And once you understand, you decide what grows next.
Until next time, kittens—same Bat time, same Bat channel. XOXO