An ode to painful emotions

Subject: An ode to painful emotions
Date: 26 May 2017

I’m really struggling with the ambiguity of life! I know everything’s temporary and therefore all things will pass; physical, environmental and those awful things we refer to as feelings… but when I’m in the think of it, that is, when I’m triggered emotionally then it’s very b****dy hard to be mindful and just sit with my emotions and tell myself “…and this too will pass”. Yes, I feel knee jerk anger to a perceived slight, yes I rush to judge and blame that person for my feelings being hurt, yes I add fuel to the fire by mulling and picking away at the slight, digging at my own clay heart, clawing and gauging great big ruts into my engorged heart, hurting it even more and ensuring those already deep ruts become trenches and eventually great gaping pits of pain and anguish enflamed and awash with a roaring lava of anger which in turn seeps like poisonous mercury into my blood and traversing around my whole body, igniting every nerve it touches and settling in an icy lake in my bladder. “Take these rotten guts and free me of all extremes!” I howl into the echoing abyss of my life. If I’m ‘lucky’, then, I get to cry, cry, cry, cry great big ugly sobs rasp in a strangled blare from a hot, restricted and very dry throat….. and then peace will descend in my sleep and before I know it I am entranced in a beautiful, warm and loving dream that envelopes my whole body like a womb, holding me suspended in time and space, feeling light and joyful and able to face up to life again. I awake and find myself at peace with the ambiguity, happy to see that the ‘other’ person meant no real harm and was in turn speaking only from their own perspective and hurting psyche and perhaps the comment was said in return for some past misdemeanour's on my half? Or simply because I triggered their projections when they unconsciously picked up on the things I wasn’t saying. I really don’t know why people do and say the things they do, I don’t even know why I do and say the things I do, so judgement is futile – it’s just a story I tell myself to ensure my delicate ego remains intact – how my precious and narcissistic ego hates to catch sight of it’s true ugly and disfigured reflection, better to smash the mirror and run!

I don’t know if writing all of this will help the next time I ‘loose the plot’ and spiral down into (self made) despair, because my monkey brain reacts quicker than my more reasonable higher brain, but for now it felt good to write all of the above and I wanted to write it as a reminder to myself to look at my processing of ‘hurts’ – to observe my feelings, to know the subtle variances of them, to pick out the shades of anger, to pick out the pain, to pick out the judgement (retaliation), to pick out the shame and the guilt and to move them around and match them together with their memory counterparts, like matching up Mahjog tiles on the screen of my mind….. up-turning each tile, pondering what it represents, returning it and remembering where it’s placed and then searching for its simile and finding it’s antithesis. With practice perhaps I can catalogue all of the Mahjog tiles of my past and quickly match them with their rightful feelings and then in the instance of hurt I can think “oh she hurt me there because she sounded just like ___ and acted in the same manner as____ when she said that” and because I’ll then know all of the intricate patters in the tile and where they lead to I’ll be able to label, “hurt, pain, fear, guilt, shame, unease, anxiousness” as they whirl past the back of my eyes like freight speeding by rail through dark tunnels, deep valley’s, open plains and cityscapes and finally back to their rightful place buried deep underground, to become one again with nature and life and all of mankind…. Where hope and optimism and warmth and compassion can re-fertilise and grow tall and strong ready to weather the next heavy rain fall of misplaced words and accusations…… well it’s a nice thought anyway, but that’s Nirvana and I’m not really sure anyone actually resides there, least not all year round.

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