Feeling All The Feels Is Hard Work

I went to a church service yesterday to see my husband sing. During the prayer at the end of her sermon, the Pastor referred to four victims of two separate tragic crimes which occurred in our town last week. I was tearing up as we said Amen. My husband's solo was immediately afterward and then the congregation sang Amazing Grace. Talk about a triple whammy. I couldn’t stop crying.

I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t look at anyone. All I could do was cry. And feel. All the feelings at once: proud of my husband, grateful for him and our marriage, love for his family who was there, and for my family that is far away, grief for the crime victims, grief for losses in our family, for friends fighting cancer. Each feeling was connected to the next until they became one giant pulsing emotion.

After the service, my husband received several compliments on his solo. “You brought your wife to tears,” commented one white haired lady with a smile. My sweet husband smiled and rubbed my arm. He knew the truth.

I don’t know the victims of the homicides in our town. That doesn’t make the violence any less senseless, the losses any less tragic and horrific. I think of their grieving families and my heart breaks.

 

At home, my husband came downstairs after changing out of his suit to find me lying on the couch weeping again. He came over to comfort me but didn’t speak. “You know what’s weird?” I sniffed, “Right now, I’m crying because I’m so grateful that everyone I love is alive.” 

He sat with me for a while, then left to make us some tea. I got down on the floor with my dog Charlie. He’s a very emotionally intelligent creature. (I have a friend who refers to him as a Buddha.) I curled up beside him and he touched his nose to the top of my head and we stayed this way for a while. I called to my husband to come and take this photo because this was real. This is what it looks like to be a sensitive, emotional human being who gets overwhelmed by feeling and thinking and loving. Sometimes I just can’t move. 

My husband is a sensitive empathic soul as well. He says “It’s a blessing and a curse.” I don’t necessarily think it’s ever a curse but it isn’t always easy or fun. 

Friends who read my blog and Facebook posts often compliment me on my positivity and gratitude practice. I appreciate that people notice. That’s the upside. I usually don’t discuss the flipside, but I feel called to talk about it today.  

As one of my favorite writers/self-help Gurus, Glenn Doyle Melton says, “Life is hard—not because we’re doing it wrong, just because it’s hard.”

When we live fully, when we love fully, when we appreciate life as much as we can, life is difficult. That shit hurts. When we drift through our days without looking around or being passionate about things, it can be easier. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve thrown up my head back and wailed “Why do I have to care so much?" knowing that if I cared less, I'd hurt less.

The thing is if I didn’t care so much, I wouldn’t be me. If I didn’t check cardboard boxes along the road to make sure there aren’t kitten inside, if I didn’t weep when I read the last Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book, then I also wouldn’t connect with the performers I work with or be in tune with my pets’ health. It’s all the same muscle. Is it my brain or my heart or my soul? Or a combination of the three? I have no idea but it’s real. 

I know I'm not the only soul like myself out there. We're trained from a young age to be ashamed of our emotional selves and hide them. So what do you do when the feelings get to be too much?

S is for Sex

I vacillated between whether or not I should go with this topic for my S post. I don't want to offend any A to Z participants, or break any of the rules. I had other ideas for S subjects: self care, social media, stress, solitude. I certainly could write about those things, but when I looked at my list of S words, I kept coming back to sex. (If you know me well, I'm sure that line mad you chuckle!) When I think about all those other words, I don't see one that holds as many life lessons for me as the subject of sex.

If I have to sum it all up into one, my life lesson when it comes to sex is this: It is totally okay to be a woman who likes sex. It's nothing to be ashamed of and there are healthy, positive ways to go about it!

My mother discovered I had lost my virginity by doing some snooping. I was a senior in high school at the time, less than a month away from graduation. She got mad at me,  I was grounded. There was never an explanation other than I was young and shouldn't have done it. Maybe this is why I developed a sense of shame around sex that lasted through my marriage. It wasn't until I was divorced and approaching thirty that my attitude changed.

I've taken a lot of slack for being a gal who admits she's looking to get laid on occasion. I've been called names and judged by others. I'll admit I've made some poor choices in this arena, but not only do all my experiences make me who I am, I also know that my sexual confidence contributes to me being an honest, loving partner in my current relationship.

I am not advocating promiscuity here. Not at all. I just think there is a double standard in our society when it comes to attitudes about sex and gender. A guy who has a lot of sexual partners is a stud but a girl who does is a slut. It isn't fair! I believe there are ways to talk and teach about sex that advocate healthy relationships and sexual behaviors without shaming.

I also think it's extremely important for women to talk to each other about sex. Keeping all your secrets to yourself perpetuates that air of shame. If I didn't have friends who I could vent to and ask personal questions, I wouldn't be writing this post!

No More Secrets

Thanks to my friend Melissa, I've recently fallen in love with a song called "Secrets" by Mary Lambert. I mean, I cannot stop listening to it. I guess it's been out for a while now but I had never heard it before she told me about it, which is cool because the timing is quite serendipitous for my life right now.

A couple weeks ago, I was out shopping with my good friend Sophie who always treats me to a pedicure and a trip to the mall for my birthday. While browsing in Hot Topic, I came across a pair of shoes that I'd seen there before but lacked the confidence to buy. Soph took one look at them and said "Those are so you. You have to buy them." There were two pairs left, one in my size so I slipped one on as gingerly as if I were Cinderella with a glass slipper. It fit! I held my foot up off the ground and wiggled it. "Do you really think I should buy these, even though I'm 36?" Her response was perfect, "I think you should buy them especially because you're 36. This is what I love about you." So I bought the shoes and haven't regretted it for a second!

Finding those shoes on that trip was perfect timing because only an hour earlier, while getting our toes done, I was telling Soph that I feel as if I've recently made a significant transformation into not caring so much as to what other people think about me.

When I hit my thirties, I became acutely aware of my "age inappropriateness" in that I was divorced, single and living alone in a relatively small town that I moved to just before I turned 30. I have a lot of tattoos and mostly male friends. Nothing there is anything to be ashamed of but when packed together and judged by others, it can feel otherwise.

I was raised that if you were leaving the house, you made sure your bra straps didn't show or your pants were "too tight" because those things were inappropriate and gave other people (meaning men) the impression that you were a certain type of girl. As I've aged and my body has changed, I've remained hyper aware of my appearance when I go out. It's not in a vain way, like do I look hot but that ever vague appropriateness.

Over the past few years, I had found myself looking at what I'm wearing when I leave the house (jeans with a DMB Tshirt and plaid Chucks) asking myself "Is this what a woman my age should be wearing?" It's stressful and exhausting because the truth is, this is what I want to wear. I love these Tshirts and sneakers. I'm comfortable physically and emotionally. But I look around when I'm out to eat or standing in line at a store and I see women who are more "put together" than me and I wonder what it means.

The chorus to "Secrets" includes a line that goes "I know I'm not the only one who spent so long attempting to be someone else, well I'm over it" and the first time I heard it, my heart sang because that's exactly how I've been feeling lately. When I looked at those incredible cat sneakers and I thought Are these meant for someone my age? my immediately next thought was Fuck it, I like 'em.

I love it when I'm out shopping with a friend and she holds something up and says "Hey, this is you!" It means she knows me well and that my personality reflects in how I dress. I think that's pretty awesome.

I've had a conversation about this with a couple of friends since posting a picture of my cat shoes on FaceBook (Most people who commented wanted to know where they could buy a similar pair for their daughter *sigh*). It's amazing to me how universal this topic is with women. Why do we care so much? Who are we dressing to impress when we go out, ourselves? Our partners? Strangers?

I've finally realized that it doesn't matter! I am who I am no matter what clothes I'm wearing. If my tattoos don't show, it doesn't mean they don't exist.

I know I'll never get to a place where I don't care what I look like at all. That's not what I'm striving for. I just want to be myself and not feel guilty about it. I'm over it.