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or unwilling to feel my emotions? i often hear my peers share about **wanting to change how they feel,** and wonder if i fall into the same trap. it is quite true, that when i came to recovery i was certainly emotionally confused. i could not or better pout would not identify how i was feeling, as i had come to believe that feelings were for losers. even though i have been clean for a minute, i can still hear that particular story, from time to time, even though i have yet to die from any feeling, no matter how uncomfortable any feeling may be. i have also discovered that most of the time, it is not that i am uncomfortable feeling whatever feeling i may be having, it is i FEAR that the feeling will unleash some sort of chain reaction that will drive me into doing things i may not wish to do. in other words, i FEAR that feelings will make my life more unmanageable. just a taste of some of the insanity that rolls around in my head. all of that FEAR, however, is just the means that the part of me i call addiction, uses to send me into reactive behaviors. what i really want is not to change how i feel, but to not feel at all.
with all of that behind me for right now, i really did enjoy the state of stoicism that using once gave me. even though i know that stoicism is not really about NOT feeling anything. being emotionally confused once i came out of the fog of substances was an unintended consequence of getting clean and one i have come to appreciate, not the emotionally confused part, but the part of having to become less confused about what i am feeling and how to deal with the feelings as they come down the pike. i can be truly stoic these days, when i allow myself the luxury of actually feeling a feeling, rather than trying to suppress them, or even change them. acceptance that i have feelings, is the key to finding some balance in my life, just for today.
on a side not, i have the strangest feeling today, one of actually having the desire to return to work, tomorrow. vacation has been great, i actually let go of everything related to work for the past seven days and even though i am considering logging in and “peeking” at my work e-mail, a little bit later, i am not dreading what i may find. i know that i am not irreplaceable at my position and that what i do for a living, does not define who i think i am, just for today. as a result, today, i i drift through the few responsibilities i may have, i can okay with feeling lazy and unproductive, as i have come to the conclusion that is not a bad thing, just for today.

∞ DT ∞