The habit of a lifetime...

Emotional repression.
It's the habit of a lifetime.

So much so that I sometimes don't even make a conscious decision to do it. It's like an autopilot kicking in and taking charge, pushing feeling and emotion away.  Then it hits you out of the blue that there's this tidal wave of emotion hidden underneath the surface and you can't let it out, even though you want to.  The tears you need to cry get stuck behind your eyes.  Or you might even be able to begin to cry, but after just 2 tears your eyes are dry and mocking.  Your emotion sits there in the pit of your stomach and heavy in your chest, immovable.

Of course sometimes it is a conscious choice. I am well versed in the practise of keeping oneself numb, of running away from tears and emotion and pain.  I was taught that being upset was unacceptable.  Then pushing all feeling away became a way to cope when I was little and I didn't know what else to do and it stuck. The habit of a lifetime.  

It isn't so simple and easy as it sounds of course, the strain and effort of being numb leeches out into other ways to cope, other ways to feel.   I used to cut myself to let my feelings out, but I  haven't done that in over 10 years.  I channeled all my anxiety into food and sought refuge in obsession and restriction but I saw through that guise.  I learnt that repression long term is damaging and self destructive and I stopped hurting myself like that.

Over the years I have learnt so much, how to get it out by writing, how to talk to friends a little and I know that letting emotion out isn't unacceptable. Yet still I haven't been able to master the skill of just letting myself feel.  I know that's not so uncommon, when a big important crisis happens we all have our own kind of auto pilot.

I know now that play, being beaten would probably do me the world of good, because it would force the tears. But I won't play, I'm too raw and I might get too emotional, I don't even now what "too emotional" is. Perhaps it just means that they might glimpse more of my vulnerability than I could cope with. That it would mean opening myself up, and I need to be able to do that myself, in my own time, on my own terms.

I need to learn how to feel this without leaning on something else.  This week I have been pushing my feelings away, apart from 2-3 tears on Wednesday when I found out my mum has cancer, I haven't cried, and for the most part I haven't felt very much, just the pressure building, the feeling of stress.  The tears behind my eyes sometimes and well of emotion when I am walking to work and this morning on this train where I am writing this.

Today I have decided I need to let it out, not now of course, I don't do public emotional displays, but maybe later. That's the plan anyway.  As absurd as that might sound, how controlled and calculating it may be.  I don't know how else to approach it, just trying to let it happen doesn't usually work.  Though sometime the damn breaks unexpectedly and it spills out and it will come, I know it will eventually, because in truth I am so full of fear and grief that I can't hold it in much longer.  I'm just ready now, to try and let it out, I don't want to run away from it anymore.  That itself is a huge step, that in itself is another step towards changing me, changing this, my habit of a lifetime.