Numb to Feeling
WE'RE NOT FINE. WHY ARE WE LYING?
I wrote this prior to news of the Uvalde shootings, which only furthers my sadness, so tired of suppressing our unfelt feelings. But if we were fine, there wouldn’t be school shootings. Everything is “fine” until a national tragedy, 27 total since January. When will we stop costuming — pretending that, we’re fine? We’re not. And there are always warning signs. Just like physical illness, unfelt feelings and needs manifest as disease, symptoms arise before patients die. But the root of the issue as I see it — is lack of processing. When will we start learning how to say what we're feeling?
My uncle died Monday night. He was married to my dads sister, We weren’t close. But he lived close, same neighborhood as my parents, across the street. I saw him rarely, but he always saw me. Acknowledged what I was doing, asked questions curiously. He worked with my family, “He didn’t want to die,” was what they told me. Losing anyone is sad. Although I think of it as less ending more beginning. We all die one day. I think the fear is not living fully— existing instead of feeling everything, Not letting ourselves grieve, bypassing our emotions, self sabotaging, distracting, freezing or forgetting to celebrate even the little things.
Much of my life I lied, “I’m fine.” I’m done lying. Sometimes, I’m not fine. The admission is new for me, but instead of isolating, I now find grace for me, and as I heal, integrate and find new footing, I also sometimes lose myself in past wounding, and get stuck swimming upstream, rocks tied to my ankles, swallowing water, and I want to scream, Help Me, but asking for help is still a new skill I’m learning because in the past, asking always came with a price so it seemed. But really, I was seeking outside of me, asking the wrong people, so I only to relied upon me. I’m not alone in these feelings. But if we don’t feel them, they become us.
The night he died, before my mom called me, I awoke in a cold sweat the same time the news arrived to my parents — my psyche already reacting to his passing. Our bodies know. When I called my Dad to tell him I was sorry and that I loved him. He said, “Yes it’s sad, but he had stage 4 lung cancer, colon cancer, diabetes etc…” I replied, “But Dad, you saw him everyday, it’s sad when someone dies. I see your sad. I’m sad too. I love you.” He said, “I understand what you’re saying. Thank you.” When I arrive home today for the funeral, I will hug everyone tighter, especially those who are less comfortable feeling.
So often we feel unseen, become mean or start spiraling, self sabotaging, lost in our lonely. Those feelings we hide or bury inside manifest into illness, disease, cancer, death or dying, They become growths in our bodies if we don't feel them, the cries become cancers if we never cry them. Or worse they erupt in violence. But this country has long been numb to killing, unwilling to identify the deep wounding, mental illness, emotional suppression, and the lack of regulation of selling deadly weapons.
I refuse to deny, to comply … We were all born as children, feeling -- laughing, crying, screaming, acknowledging tired, sad or hungry, before we were conditioned. Let’s stop legitimizing distraction, bypassing, and filling (with work food booze sex drugs sleep sweat or otherwise). and start feeling.
Imagine a world without all this wounding — as a start, by claiming our wounding.
Feeling is new to me, too. For years, instead of feeling, I ran from me, claimed to be fine, smart, driven, pretty. Except that time when I was twenty five and spontaneously went on a yoga retreat. Flew to Mexico last minute without really telling anybody. Traumatized, but without conscious memory of my laundry list of rapes, but fresh out of an abusive relationship, my PTSD reoccurring. Upon landing, I was transported via rickety boat by two men who didn’t speak English. If I’d disappeared, it would’ve been hard to find me. In a three walled hut off the beach, in the middle of the trees, no sleep, up all night frozen that someone might come and attack me. Now I understand that it was a near breakdown, but I didn’t have the language, instead isolated in my pain, fear, and anxiety. The retreat concluded with a sweat lodge ceremony, in 140 degrees, led by a shaman — sweating, chanting, releasing. As I emerged, lightheaded and empty, I surrendered, literally, walked into the ocean and allowed the waves to carry me, swept under by the current, unfeeling but so present, I let go completely, without speaking, instead deciding that I’d had enough living. The current swept me under, but the group saved me. I woke up to them fishing me out of the waves, grasping for air for my near lifeless body. I thought I was ready to give up because my feelings were too heavy.
I’m sad thinking that could have been my ending. Instead I’m here, learning to share feelings and create space for others to be heard, felt and seen. When someone asks how I’m doing, I no longer say Fine, I reply honestly.
Perhaps If we put words to our feelings we can stop the physical manifestation of all this misery. What would the world be with less of so much inner tyranny - the fight that begins in our minds and then attacks our cells, erupting as illness mental or physically? Don’t we all want peace? Flow — starts internally.
Go ahead, start simply, say how you feel, put words to the feelings,
When someone asks, how are you?
Reply Honestly. Remove Fine from your vocabulary.
Just a suggestion. It’s working for me.
Love always,
Olivia
And for the innocent lives taken may they Rest In Peace.