Being in the now
(it isn't all rainbows and unicorns and its necessary to heal ourselves, our relationship, our world)
Over the last few days I’ve been deep in my feelings. There have been moments of sobbing. Moments of feeling on top of the world. Moments of confusion and frustration. Moments of feeling balanced and neutral.
But not really.
I mean, yes, that is all true. And. There’s more to it than that.
I have been in my feelings, theoretically feeling them, and I haven’t been able to name them. What looks like sadness or grief on the outside hasn’t felt like sadness or grief on the inside. What looks like feeling on top of the world on the outside, feels like peace, stability, and knowing on the inside. What looks like being on balanced and neutral on the outside, feels flat and stale on the inside. What looks like frustration and confusion actually feels like frustration and confusion, but it also is railing against what I know I need to do, instead of getting what I want, having control, or demanding the unknown be known.
What looks like sadness and grief but doesn’t feel like it had me spinning in my head. I wanted to understand what I was feeling, what is this emotion?? And why isn’t it grief and sadness - as a dear friend said If it looks like grief and sadness, why not grief and sadness? I’m crying, I’m thinking about a relationship I believe I should be grieving, but that’s not the actual feel of it and its leaving me frustrated, annoyed, questioning my humanity, and confused.
This lead to me to drowning in an ocean of shoulds. What I should be feeling about this situation, this person. What the grief should look like. How I should be a ball of the floor sobbing uncontrollably (like I have been in past relationship endings). How, because of how much this particular person and relationship has meant to me, still mean to me, I should be feeling the depths of sadness and pain over what appears to be an ending of the relationship, or at least a chapter of it. At the end of past relationships, ones that didn’t mean as much to me, with people who I knew we weren’t really a match, I lost my shit, leading to sobbing, barganing, clinging. I should be doing all that. I should be in attachment panic. I should be feeling unbearably anxious and clingy. I should feel like my world is falling apart, that I am falling apart. I should feel an emptiness, a great loss. I should, I should, I should… because of what the person and relationship meant/means to me, because of the depth of connection we had/have, because of all the healing that took place in our time together. I should be sad, I should be grieving, that at least that chapter has come to a close, if not the entirety of the relationship.
But I’m not. And it is beyond confusing and frustrationg.
I wanted to figure it out, this puzzle of why am I not feeling what I think I should, why am I not responding the way I think I should. So I stayed in my head, my mind, my intellect. Spinning around, trying to figure it out. Trying to know if I’m feeling the way I am because a part of me is trying to avoid grief or if it’s because I know I will actually see the person again. Am I deep in intuition and knowing or am I deep in denial and avoidance? Round and round I went. In my head. Every time the feeling would come up and I couldn’t name it, understand it, into my logic brain (and out of the feeling in my body and soul) I went.
This also happened about a month ago. It happened about three months ago. I’m sure it happened multiple times before that during this particular relationship. Feeling what looks like grief but doesn’t feel like it. And everytime I would try to figure it out. And everytime I come to the same conclusion:
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