Don’t Be Afraid of Feeling ‘Too Much’

               I found myself shaking with anger in my car today over a tiny discrepancy—one that really shouldn’t have riled me to the extent of arguing with my steering wheel, pretending it was the individual I was upset with. I find this scary sometimes, as I’m sure most do. Emotions have a way of consuming us to the point that it often feels out of our control. I discussed this “out of control” feeling a bit when I wrote my piece about time, but I feel that it’s worth touching on again.

            Mental health is not a formula, a checklist, or symptoms; it is chaos, it is unpredictable and it is okay that it is. As an individual and a woman that has had many fist fights with mental health I understand that it is never black and white and that it’s never a consistent experience. There are days where I will write 3 essays, read a novel and clean my apartment and I feel unbreakable, a golden vessel of a human. But more often than not there are days where I am ugly crying on my bathroom floor because my shower door fell off or laying numb and light headed in my bed knowing that I have so much to do but cannot bring myself to move because that would be too much for my overwhelmed system to handle. I cannot by any means speak to anyone’s experience with their emotions because that relationship is intimate and beautifully unique to everyone, but I can offer some words of solace for you, right now.  

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P.S. DON’T DO THIS :)

            Emotions have the power to override our rationality and that idea is so inspiringly human. Emotions are a primary color that paints our experience as feeling, and existing and experiencing beings. I truly feel that we have a right, and a duty to validate this for ourselves. I feel that often times there is a tendency to suppress emotion rather than to really feel it. I urge you to free the stigma around emotions and value your ability to feel. When you feel like emotions are overtaking you, remember that you are the creator of emotions and that they are not scary foreign bodies acting upon you but only the most organic and intrinsic creations we might have. Try worshipping your emotions this week and see how it feels. This poem is constructed in emotion and attempts to color some of the gray area that you might feel while overwhelmed. I hope it lends it’s hand to you as you read.

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(Credit to my poetry teacher for helping me create this)

Breakfast

I do not know how to swim

Well I do,

But I do not know how to float.

Feels like heavy stones

Decorating my limbs with weight.

When did the sinking start?

I don’t know,

It came softly, then all at once.

That happens sometimes love

You will feel,

As if the sky was hung for you.

I never believed

In falling

Until I was holding the wind.

It shouldn’t be long now,

I know that,

Like milk spilt

on wooden tables.

It feels very heavy

It is okay.

Writing Location:

This poem is quite old but I wrote it in a library on my college campus that is required to be quiet at all times. This week’s recommendation is to find a spot that so silent that you have to be alone with just your thoughts. Silence provokes unheard thoughts occasionally.

If you like this….

Try J. Iron Word on Instagram! He writes a lot about love and emotion.