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beyondthetemples-ooc · 2 years ago

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I started like... mildly crying 20 minutes ago and I haven’t stopped.

It’s equal parts Good Feelings and Bad Feelings! But it’s a lot of feelings.

tl;dr helping a friend made me emotional, my stomach tormented me last night so I’m especially fragile, I’m insanely excited for QPP Moving Day TOMORROW!, and then I heard a leader in the org say “I celebrate the person sitting in your seat” and a bunch of other really loving, gentle, appreciative things and I realized how badly I NEED TO HEAR THAT, and how, for the longest time, I just didn’t.

Mild emetophobia warning for discussion of Feeling Bad, and emotional warning for what might amount to... childhood emotional neglect? Is that a thing?

I don’t know if I can ramble, my emotions are kinda threadbare right now. So, bullet points.

- I stayed up late last night to talk to a friend having a crisis. Staying up late alone wouldn’t have been a problem at all, I was happy to “make time” for sia! But

- RIGHT as I was falling asleep, my stomach hit me with Overwhelmingly Sick Feeling that escalated RAPIDLY, convinced me I was going to Be S*ck for 2-3 hours straight, and I was trying to fight the phobia down, I really was, but I couldn’t. I wound up laying there huddling and shivering, frantic for Literally Hours, until it finally decided to just feel sore instead, and I finally got to sleep.

( ^ That part is probably my own fault. I got Chipotle for dinner because I wanted to Do Things instead of cook yesterday, and Chipotle usually goes well. But then I ate the whole bowl AND the whole (small) bag of ships. Which I KNOW I shouldn’t do, my stomach can barely handle a SMALL meal! But I THOUGHT I was still hungry? And I felt fine, mostly just sleepy, Right Up Until 1-2 AM. And then it all hit me HARD.)

But even when it finally calmed down, emotionally I was in pieces. It Didn’t Actually Happen, but gods I really thought it was going to that whole time.

So between recovering from The Struggle Against Phobia Panic and not sleeping much, I’ve spent all day feeling low-energy and tired and wrung out.

So I’ve got this Emotional Torment right up alongside the “WILD INSANE EXCITEMENT AHHHH” because my QPP is moving in here TOMORROW, and I can’t believe it’s finally going to be REAL? We’re going to be here? Together? In this place that’s our own? We can see each other and hug each other and play games or watch movies together whenever our schedule allows? I can tell them goodnight in person?

I have so many starry-eyed feelings about this, I just. Fuck, man, it’s going to be life-changing.

And then I listened to a recording from a couple years ago. One of the leaders in the organization, probably one of my very favorite people to hear speaking, gave one of her heart-wrenchingly encouraging speeches. Encouragement wrenches MY heart, anyways. In a good way, but also in the way that makes me realize how starved I am for that kind of... just, love.

“I celebrate the person sitting in your seat.”

I’m just going to copy the relevant bits of the message I sent to my mentor and elaborate a little bit, because... I don’t have the energy to reword it, frankly.

I started crying a little at the part where she said "I celebrate the person sitting in your seat"...but I also think there's some underlying wounds that she speaks to. That part specifically made me feel so overwhelmingly loved and appreciated and part of the reason I started crying is because I don't feel that way very often. But I want to. I think everyone wants that, probably.

And I'm almost envious of her. I want so, so badly to learn how to edify and uplift and love on people the way she does.

It's especially hard because my love language is words of affirmation and I want to be able to give those words to people, but that's one of the times my throat just doesn't work and I struggle to get the words out. They're important and deeply felt, and for me big emotions are the hardest feelings to put words to. But I desperately WANT to. I want people to know I care.

But I want to learn how to give people those affirmations more often. And I don't think I don't do it at all, because last night a friend was going through a crisis and she called me and we talked for like an hour, and afterwards she said it helped so much, and today another friend...sent me a message saying they're having a hard time and could they please have some comfort, so obviously I'm making SOME kind of impact in peoples' lives. They must feel safe and loved if they come to me for help like that. But I forget that really easily.

This is probably one of those things that's going to come with practice, but do you have any tips for how to help people feel loved and appreciated? I'm not sure exactly HOW to practice telling people "I love you" and "I appreciate you". I haven't had many good examples of that being communicated in my life, so when I try to think of HOW to do it, I kinda just draw a blank.

Is it like that method you have about practicing feeling joy, where you notice the things that make you feel that way, and make notes of it, and then kind of take that and extend that to others? Or is this one of those things where you have to ask people point-blank, "What makes you feel loved and appreciated?" How do you shine that light and warmth on people?

All I want in life is to leave a positive mark on this world, and I think that's a pretty important way to do that.

But what I didn’t tell my mentor is, I spent ten minutes while I was trying to compose this message to feel my way through the pain that GL’s message brought up.

With the love I felt from it came the deep-aching realization that the reason it felt So Amazingly Impactful to me is because I don’t GET THAT much.

I so, so very RARELY am told “Thank you”, or “You made a difference”, or “I’m proud of you”.

That last one, I’m so desperate to hear that when my stepmother (OF ALL PEOPLE!) was drunk at my sister’s wedding reception and told me “I’m so proud of you”, I legitimately felt my eyes going wide and starry, and I tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t resist fishing deeper. “Really? For what?” (She didn’t have any specifications to that, unfortunately. “Just the person you are.” That’s news to me. It felt a little empty tbh.)

Like... I want to specify that my mother DOES tell me she’s proud of me, she encourages me, she compliments me, she gives me heartfelt praise and I can tell she really means it. But her and my mentor are probably my only source of that. I didn’t have those heartfelt conversations with her until I was about 19 years old. I wonder if maybe she didn’t know how to give me those shreds of affirmation, the same way I struggle to give them to people now?

Growing up, I essentially NEVER heard any kind of praise or thanks. The one and only thing people usually praised me for was “You’re so smart”, but even that was usually the backhanded-compliment prefix to a following “But if only you were better at being smart!” (Gifted kid complex, anyone?)

I used to write in my diary when I was in elementary school that “nobody loves me”. I wasn’t being melodramatic or exaggerating, that was genuinely what it felt like sometimes. I felt unappreciated and unloved. I would be told “Love you!” before bed and that was about it. I still drank up those 2-to-3 word statements and cried the one time my stepmother didn’t tell me that. But I was starved of any genuine praise rooted in sincere appreciation or pride or joy.

Maybe I got a “You did so well!” after doing a solo piece in a choir concert, or giving a speech at a school function. But when I stopped performing on a stage around age 12, I stopped getting even that.

That was when I started sharing my stories. When I started posting my fanfictions, I was so incredibly over-the-moon ELATED whenever someone posted a nice comment that I responded to Every Single Individual One with a private message giving them my heartfelt thanks. And if they were anonymous, I responded in the story’s next chapter.

And the thing that hurts so much about this NOW is... I desperately, really, truly, needfully Want to Tell People I Love and Appreciate Them. But I don’t have any examples. I don’t know how. I wasn’t taught the language of positivity growing up, and I wasn’t shown how to be vulnerable enough to be sincerely grateful and happy for someone.

I don’t want to make people feel unloved or unappreciated the way I felt growing up. I don’t EVER want someone to think I take their love for granted. I never, ever EVER want to make people think they’re unworthy or failures or even just “nothing special”. Especially the people I love.

One of my biggest “angst” points when I was a kid relentlessly controlling my emotions was lamenting that the people around me felt unloved. I thought that was my own fault. I didn’t realize that’s something you’re taught, just like sewing and cooking and writing. I thought I was broken somehow, that I had permanently removed my own ability to feel and show love.

That wasn’t the case. That wasn’t EVER the case. I never stopped being compassionate; I never stopped holding my friends very near and dear to my heart. I never (well, almost never) became cruel. I always had love, it just felt trapped inside me. I didn’t know how to release it.

I still don’t. And that makes me sad because the people in my life, even the random people I talk to on the street, deserve to feel loved and deserve to know they’re appreciated and important and deserve that genuine connection. They deserve encouragement and praise.

And the people I love most... My boyfriend, my friends, my mother? I so, so desperately mourn for the fact that I can’t bear my whole heart. I don’t know how to share the immense well of love with them when it’s locked up.

I wish I knew how to tell people, “I love and appreciate you.”

I’m trying to learn, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. Does it matter? Does it make a difference? Do people know I love them?

(Don’t try to eliminate all emotion from yourself for 10+ years, kids. It makes you insecure about what you show, what you CAN show, and it makes it harder to connect with the hearts around you.)

There was more, it is a deep wound, but I’m running out of steam... I might be all cried out now. I’m not sure.

Anyways, I’m going to go catch up on Broken Youth because I don’t know what to do with these emotions and maybe that’ll make me cry more and get it out.

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