Day #20

I'm not able to connect with my feelings of sadness. Not like most people. I try but I'm not able to lean into them. My mind just can't do it.

When I was much younger, before I was 14, I was a sensitive kid. I would cry often. Some might say too often.  As is often the case with sensitive types, my vulnerabilities were used against me. In my case, my biggest tormentors were other kids at school and, more importantly, a family member. One whose principal responsibility should have been to nurture and protect me but did neither of those things. After enduring many years of crap from both inside and outside the home, I hit my breaking point. I then decided I would no longer give others this advantage over me. It was either that or die. Life was that unbearable. The easiest way my 14 year old brain could see to accomplish this was to wall off my emotions. Over the course of the next 2 or 3 years I did just that. But I only walled off the emotions that made me look soft, weak. The hard emotions like anger and contempt got a promoted to a place of honor.

I lived this way for years. It made for some really tough times in my marriage and with other relationships as well. Add alcohol to the equation, and things could get really toxic. But then I quit drinking and started to grow up. To become, finally, an adult. While I did manage to sand off most of the rougher edges of my personality over the last decade, I never did reconnect with my softer emotions. I didn't want to. Even to this day, it gives me the willies to embrace anything that makes me feel (?) weak or vulnerable. 

It's not that I don't feel them, I do, but I don't think I feel them the same way as others. Over the last 3 weeks, I have felt a tremendous sadness at the loss of my son. I have. But that feeling is muted; fuzzy at the edges. And I can't cry. Not now. I balled multiple times the first 3 or 4 days immediately after, but that was an involuntary reaction to the trauma. Like screaming due to extreme physical pain. You can't not do it. But now, 3 weeks later, I'm struggling to lean into the grief. To let it wash over me and let go of my emotions. It's like being told to wiggle your ears. The muscle tissue or nerve endings required to make that happen either don't exist or are so dormant they might as well not be there. 

I'm going to have to find ways that I can either rebuild or reactivate these pathways. I have to. I'm afraid of what might happen to me, to my marriage, if I can't a way to accept my grief and deal with it emotionally. The longer I push it way, the angrier and / or more depressed I will get. 

Now that I know I need to wiggle my ears, I just have to figure out how. Easy, right?