On Feeling

I love you all so much.

Today, I cried in yoga class.

We sat down with our yoga professor for a robust check-in during which we could all take a second to process the last couple of days. I did not think I was feeling particularly weepy and then I started talking and the floodgates opened. DePaul Housing released guidelines for what we should do as front desk receptionists if ICE officers attempt to enter student dorms. That was a big part of it.

I, like many of you, am having a hard time adjusting to oligarchic dystopia (and refuse to do so).

Where will I live? Who will I live with? Will my communities in both places survive me deciding to live in one place the other? THIS IS NOT THE COUNTRY I WANTED TO INHERIT AS A FRESH COLLEGE GRADUATE. What the hell am I even going to do? What am I good at? How is that marketable? Will any of it be good enough? How will I cleave myself a space in the world where I get to take wonderful care of myself and be housed? How am I going to achieve my full potential? Should I get an IUD? I don’t want to get an IUD… But I probably need different, more permanent birth control. I live in a blue state. My stomach is in knots. Why is my stomach in knots? Is it because I’ve been doing everything wrong forever? I don’t think so. But why won’t it stop?

And then the anxiety spiral really gets going and I feel so lost in my own head and that feels selfish and self-centered and I hate it and I want to stop and it gets worse.

I think part of this theme of often being overwhelmed by obsessive thoughts has made it hard for me to want to feel my feelings. The fortunate paradox therein is, I am a huge feeler. Often, I find it easier to watch animal rescue videos on the internet or cry about Other Stuff with the helpful context of a heavy episode of television, but we’re working on that. I’ve always been good at very directly naming my feelings but am sometimes less awesome at giving myself the space to deeply feel them. I am an external processor but only once I have internally processed enough to know what I want to say and can make it sound eloquent and assure anyone who would listen that it’s really not that big of a deal.

I like to present an ordered person to the world. Eloquent speech, whimsical dress, unfailing love and presence for (myself and) others. I think I’ve learned to look at my fear as some inadequacy in my person and pushing it away instead of letting it in and learning from it. And then when I do express it (because I always have to) it comes out in tears. And it becomes less powerful and more exciting. This has always been the spot I have ended up in and yet every time my anxiety spikes I fear I won’t make it back to that person.

My mom is a big feeler too. She would often cry when I cried growing up. She cries about art and anger and happiness and sadness (classic) and community and fear and joy and all of the stuff. For a lot of my life, my desire to control my own emotions led me to try to shut down her tears or stop her from crying or apologize to people around us for her crying. Her tears, to younger me, felt embarrassing, dishonorable, and weak. The tears of my greatest source of comfort and stability felt, well, destabilizing. I never felt that way towards the tears of any friend or other person, indeed I was often the comforter for others and not infrequently the weeping receiver of comfort, too. I also never liked this person who told her mom to stop and bottle it up.

Then, I started college and being in such a new situation left me with no choice but to become myself even more deeply and that person I became cries at everything, too. Happiness, cats, butterflies, fear, sadness, change, anger, love… it all comes out in tears. I now understand my tears much more scientifically as nothing more than a little release and much more deeply as a beautiful and salty representation of how much I have learned to let myself not only feel but express.

So, today, I cried in yoga because the world feels horribly stressful and the wealthiest men in the world sat by the president when he was inaugurated. And then I sat in a room full of other girls my age (and my sweet Jim) and almost everyone raised their hand when asked if they experience emotions in their bodies and my eyes filled up again. I feel such a fierce need to defend us, to hold everyone close, to give everyone space to feel freely and to feel held. I wish there was something I could hit. Wait, that’s not very yoga class of me.

So I cried today because the wider world feels heavy and I am scared. Honestly, though, I have not spent a single day in that class without my eyes filling up at least once. Being in communion like that, learning how to connect the practice that grounds and strengthens me to the reality of personal and worldwide suffering reminds me that I am choosing to be right here. I am choosing to open my eyes. I am choosing community and presence and showing up with my whole messy head and aching heart. I’m choosing to not stop there and love it anyway and let other people love it too. That is so scary and beautiful and terrible and true that it’s going to run down my face. The road to empowerment, for me, is cauterized in releasing my feelings and coming back to my body.