Ever since I was a young child I’ve just known that there were certain emotions that I wasn’t supposed to allow other people to see. If you cried in public you were called a “crybaby.” If you showed anger then you were sent to some kind of treatment. If you were too apathetic you were sent to treatment. If you were too sad you were sent to treatment. If you were too happy you were sent to treatment. If you focused too much you were sent to treatment. If you didn’t focus then you were sent to treatment.
See where I’m going with this?
There felt like there was no safe place to go. No safe place with these emotions. No safe place with any thoughts because if you showed a thought that was different, you could get sent to some kind of treatment. If you showed any sign of depression then you were sent to the school counselor’s office. I remember spending a lot of time there rather than in the classes that I was supposed to be in. A lot of it was due to the petty cat fights that girls had throughout middle school. We were just prepubescent girls. Of course we would argue.
The counselor’s office started feeling more like a permanent classroom though. It started feeling more like where I would end up on almost a daily basis. See, we didn’t have a good counselor though. There were times that she would say one thing and then she would turn around and completely do another thing. It would just be ridiculous. It was almost as if that counselor was throwing gas on the middle school girl fire, because we all know that needs help, right?
I learned at that age that there are people that are in high power positions that you can’t trust. She was one of them. I never felt safe or comfortable telling her anything about what was going on in my life again after she did some of those “two-faced” things that she did. I never felt right about it. It took away another adult that I felt like I was supposed to be able to trust.
Due to that, my emotions got buried. I went with what I knew; fake everything. Fake your smile, fake your personality, fake your entire life until everyone believes that you’re alright. That’s the way to do it! (Please catch that line dripping with sarcasm, do not do it that way.)
Recently, I’ve learned that there are some negative emotions that you need to just… embrace. Embrace your anger. Let the fire flow through your veins until you can’t take out any more rage through your screams. Scream, scream out your rage, scream out your anger, let the tears stream down your face, but just scream. Don’t hit. Don’t yell at anyone. Just scream. Anger is an emotion and it’s natural. It’s often a secondary emotion, though. Anger often rears its ugly head when there’s something else happening: Embarrassment, shame, disappointment, sadness, loneliness, anxiety, everything that comes along those lines. Just feel the anger. Feel where it’s coming from, and you’ll feel the truth behind it.
There’s no shame in negative emotions. There’s no shame in having real feelings, in being a real person. There’s no shame in not being plastic. There’s no shame in not being someone else’s doll. The idea of someone else’s perfect creation. There’s no shame in being a human. Embrace your emotions, let your emotions come out fierce and raw, let them be what you need them to be. Let them be real. Let them exist. Do not bury your negative emotions anymore, do not bury anger, do not bury sadness, and do not bury hope.
There is always hope among the anger and sadness. Sadness, in my belief, comes from a loss of hope, and there is nothing more to say. Do not bury hope. Do not bury the fact that you are human. Do not bury the fact that you deserve love, and you deserve happiness but you also deserve to embrace every feeling.
Leave a comment if you’ve ever felt like you’ve had to bury your sadness or anger to benefit another. Leave a comment if you’ve ever held in every negative emotion and plastered on that perfect smile just to be what others wanted. And leave a comment if you feel that you know that it’s okay to embrace these emotions. Tell me your feelings on this matter.
