Feelings

I asked friends to send me ‘first lines’ to write a story around. I got quite a few, that project is ongoing. Then I asked for a ‘subject’ as some of the first lines are hard! The only one there that came in was from C… ‘Feelings’. I think I can work with that, but not for a story. So I’m writing this blog on it.

We all have them of course, excepting the psychopaths among us. We all have to contend with them at times! (Hah, we have to contend with psychos too!) Sometimes, perhaps mostly, it’s nice. Contentment is a nice one. Joy and Happiness, of course. Relief is good. It’s when the negative ones impact on our lives that we notice them most, of course. Contentment, happiness… those are easy and practically unnoticeable when you are contented and/or happy. It’s when you lose them, only to have them replaced by sadness, misery, worry, grief… when they take over, well then we notice them all too much. When you’re elated, or just quietly happy, you don’t really think about if it will ever end. When the bad feelings arrive, you’re sure they never will end. Funny that.

Animals have feelings too. Of course, they do. Some manifestly more than others, sure. Nobody hears the screams of the daddy-longlegs you pull the legs off! Yet, anyone who sees a dog in the shelter (for instance) and denies it’s pain or sorrow or fear, or doesn’t believe that cow is scared going down the ramp in the slaughterhouse - I’d say they’re high on the psycho spectrum. Humans don’t have a monopoly on pain although we are usually better at showing it when it is not immediately obvious. If you have (had) a dog, you’ll have learned to see the signs that are not always evident. They handle things differently is all.

Me, I call my pain threshold uber-low! Gimme the drugs! I have never seen the point in being stoic. I’ll yell it out with the best of them if the dentist is hurting me. I’m not about to make his day good when he’s ruining mine! There are different circumstances and different levels of hurt, but I truly believe keeping it internal when it is too much *for you*… psychological hurt too… is detrimental to health. I don’t go crying all over the place when I can keep it in. I mean, I wouldn’t frighten the kids, lying about, languishing in bed with a damp cloth on my forehead at the least twinge, but if you stamp on my foot, accidentally or not, I’m not going to be polite about it.

Some feelings overwhelm the most stoic though. Of course. Grief is the pits. Grief has various ways of manifesting and it can hit you right away or it can simmer on a low peep and suddenly grab you by the throat when you least expect it. I’m not a follower of the ‘7 stages’ theory. Not if I’m honest. I don’t think things like that can be proscribed, so don’t see the point in classifying it. In retrospect, the categories sound legitimate, credible, sure. It’s just, if I was grieving right now, really grieving, I’d be annoyed too (a useful feeling!), wondering which stage people thought I was in. Of course, no one is saying things go chronologically, or that you have to feel this way *today*, it’s just the whole pigeon-holing I don’t like.

Grief is a very personal thing. It’s comparable to what makes you laugh, in a way. You often cannot explain why a particular thing is funny when the person next to you sees nothing funny in it. Grief can cripple the one, yet leave the other sad while not unduly bothered. There are levels. My grief for a pet, my grief for a friend, a family member… they could all be equally horrendous and sincere yet totally different from someone else, ‘equally’ affected. Different each time too. The time for the grief to kick in, the length of time it lasts, the intensity… it can all vary, every time.

Gratitude… is that a feeling? Yeah eh? I’m sure it helps to ‘quantify’ grief somewhat. Gratitude for the time you had with the one you’ve lost. Gratitude to those around who are helping you, knowing the depth of your grief. Gratitude that you had affairs in order that will take the load off, when things settle. That kind of thing. Solitude though, that feeling of being alone, that’s a biggy. That one must be hard to control for a long time if, say you lose a life partner. Guilt… that’s always a hard feeling to cope with in whatever circumstance. Even when it is entirely unjustified that you should feel at all guilty.

Hatred, anger, disbelief, abandonment… they’re all negatives that are surely difficult to shake off. I think, I do believe, that people are fundamentally meant to be happy. It’s our default setting. All the negatives put everything out of kilter and can make us ill, and yet they are so obstinate and enduring. It’s not that I believe in denying them! Not at all. Negatives can be useful at times, I’m sure. We need to feel a measure of pain to know that something is not right. It’s the all-consuming, suffocating negatives that even when battered with your strongest painkillers of whatever ilk… they still tend to prevail. Those are the ones everyone needs help with, with Patience, Love, Understanding, Friendship, Time… all of that. Hmm, Time, I don’t think falls under ‘feelings’… but you get my drift.

I’m a sucker for sad films, sad stories… anything to have a wee greet at really. Yet if I was actually grieving I know I wouldn’t want to see any of it. I know none of it would compare and I would be annoyed at the audacity of people pretending, acting out, how it is to be… well, me. I have grieved, I know. I know how it totally sucks that everyone else’s lives just go on like yours isn’t at its lowest right now.  I remember thinking ‘how dare they!’ Don’t they know how I hurt? I remember how every single thing on the telly was impossible to watch because it indirectly or perhaps even directly, referred to my situation. Somehow. At one point, I remember having just lost my dad, Dave Allan's sketch about a coffin rolling down a hill... hysterical in other circumstances... seared my eyeballs at the time. World affairs did not matter. A nuclear explosion could happen a mile off and I *could not* have noticed nor cared less. Of course, that’s an exaggeration, but it’s to illustrate how isolated, how totally muffled, insensate, grief and all its associate feelings can make you feel.

I do think grief, and all its inherent negatives, is essential too though. A ‘rite of passage’ perhaps. Not that you need to experience it if nothing particular happens in your life to cause it, but that when it does, you ‘should’ grieve. As it befits *you*. Nobody else, no prescribed stages to be followed, just how you feel. With all your feelings. Wallow in them even. Have a good soak in them. Take as long as you like. I’ve read of people saying ‘oh you must be over things now eh?’ and personally would be livid at such a (paraphrased) suggestion. That and ‘buck up’ or similar. I will decide, I think?!

So, feelings eh? Emotions. Empathy being high up on that list… normal people (and lots of animals) need them. We need to experience them. Even the negatives, even at their worst. We just need to know there is an end to the bad ones. And there is. Always. The worst will eventually be but memories. Nice memories will drown the bad ones, or at any rate, take the edge off. Grief too fades, the pain gets less, only to resurface on anniversaries, imagined or otherwise. Not because we have forgotten, but because we have learned to live with them. The good stuff becomes more prevalent and inevitably, life goes on. I'm in no way saying how anyone else should 'feel'. Just, say it, with feeling. Life does go on.