Sentient

I was listening to a podcast on the inestimable value of emotions and the gift of humanity to experience the length, breath and depth of these emotions, but we tend to believe that emotions should be ruled by logic and that to be logical means to exclude emotions. When both are mutually inclusive.

A description of existing on this plane- As much as I try to give in to the overwhelming feeling, I hold back my vulnerability because of the fear of pain.

In a discussion with an enthusiastic doctor, Renaud disease was mentioned, a condition characterized by the effect of temperature on the extremities. Upon further reading, numbness was listed as one of the prevalent symptoms, it struck me differently, for the first time, how numbness qualifies as a deficiency. To not feel is analogous to dying.

I am incapable of describing numbness because the experience in itself is so sublime that only silence best describe its activity but I can highlight a close second many of us are familiar with- trying to push it away, burying it all deep down so we can at least bring ourselves to function daily.

Never mind that this supposed functionality is succinctly hampered by our denial and escapism. This is the easier reaction to pain, avoidance and to pleasure, repetition as a panacea for pain. Of course, it is not this simple, there are distinct nuances in the extremes as not all pain is avoidable neither all pleasure addictive nor hampering.

Pain is not always acute, it is the asymptomatic ones that are the finishers. The depressive episodes and the self sabotage, the shame we carry deep inside. The curious thing about shame is how it manages to further victimize the victim. I came across a Ted talk on turning shame to strength where shame was described as being different from guilt. Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. While shame says “I am bad, guilt is I did something bad.”

I have been a partaker of many conversations where the victim excuses the perpetrator. I was almost sexually assaulted by an acquaintance in my second year at the University and the only thing I remember thinking about is how fortunate I was to have escaped because I knew I’d have never been able to get over the shame of saying I went into his apartment voluntarily and in an agape state of mind or what you may rightly call naivety. I have layers and layers of stories like these where I can distinguish the extent of my role in the unfortunate event yet, shame drags me to silence.

I remember being treated in an abusive manner by a guy I was not even in a relationship with and for a long time after the incident I could not fully narrate the account of the abuse to my friends because the only question ringing in my head was what made me a magnet for this abuse? I kept comparing myself with women who constantly experience care and pampering and the ways I must be marginally dissimilar to these women.

I know a tale or two about shame as I have collected stories and confessions about shame in my sojourn.

Let switch to pleasant tales for a minute, have you ever felt so happy that you almost deflate in anticipation of unpleasantness? I mean, that moment you get worried because things have been going too smoothly for a while and you just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Or have you ever felt yourself falling madly in love but you keep holding yourself back before you end up as the “mumu” ( Nigerian term for push over but even with more derogation intended)? Don’t be shy, you can at least admit this out loud in the room of your heart. How you hold back from picking up the phone too quickly, how you waited an extra day to call back….

So it is not just with avoidance of pain we do this, we do it with joy or pleasure too. Holding ourselves back from being too happy. Accepting a reality of sadness as a necessity of existence.

The question is if sadness is guaranteed, why do we hold back on experiencing joy fully?

I once saw a post where a little boy’s mom was searching his pocket and found glitters in it, she asked why he had it and he said it was because he wanted to be prepared should they have something to celebrate. In his mind, he didn’t think it was just enough to shout for joy, he wanted all the fanfare that went with it.

In this journey of feeling, avoidance is as decapitating as death. Someone put it succinctly, “to go through life expecting not to feel inconvenienced, frustrated, scared, heart broken, happy, sad, and all the other parts in between is having dead people’s goals.” maybe I embellished a part or two but you get the gist.

We may never get past being uncomfortable about experiencing what we think are negative emotions, we may even spend time arguing with ourselves about what we’d rather be feeling than what we are actually feeling. For example, saying, ‘I don’t want to feel sad, I have so much in my life to be grateful for‘ but the important part to hold on to if nothing else, is feelings are inescapable and are the scheduled goals for living.

If we cannot escape them no matter how we suppress them, maybe it may be prudent to embrace them in all the dimensions possible and to wring out every emotions we are fortunate enough to experience no matter how uninspiring.

I will end by saying this “maybe if we can break the silence, we can also tell the story from shame.”

yes, I quote myself now.

xoxo,

Dcconoissueur.