I Don’t Feel by Halves
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This has always been a problem for me in my life. When I feel, I feel big but there isn’t much of an in between for me. I go from feeling to shutting down really quickly. There were many years of my life where I hardly felt anything as I had shut my emotions off entirely while living with a man who would hardly acknowledge my existence most of the time and ridicule me when he did. I couldn’t handle someone laughing in my face one moment and blanking me the next, so I just retreated entirely into myself deciding the better option to be able to survive what was going on was to hide it out. This works in the moment but eventually all of those feelings bubble back out, usually in the form of involuntary shaking when I’m triggered by something, by insomnia while my mind goes into overthinking hyperdrive or when I get a moment alone and that little voice inside me goes hey remember when this happened, remember how sad you were?
I made a promise to myself when I ended the worst relationship I never could have imagined being part of last year. I vowed that I would keep feeling, that I wouldn’t shut down. I knew I needed to do this to begin to heal and to have any hope of having healthy relationships in my future. I also decided that if my feelings were too much for people then they weren’t my people. When I love, I love big and hard. You get my whole heart and passion. I have tried many times to love by halves, to pull it back, to protect myself from being crushed, but then I keep wondering why I should have to do that? Why can’t I bask in the dance that my heart does when the person I love walks in the room? Why can’t I wrap myself around them and melt into them for a few precious moments? Why can’t I be their biggest cheerleader and give my all to support them in their dreams? I don’t believe I should stop living with this part of me, it’s actually a part of me I treasure. I wanted to get rid of it because it caused me pain at the hands of other peoples neglect or judgments. I’ve learnt not to neglect my own needs and in doing that, I’ve found the balance, the sweet spot between being me and loving another. Yet there are still moments where I worry that I am too much. That I express my feelings too much, that I dream and hope too much, that maybe I’m twenty steps ahead of where another person is.
