I'm feeling it.
All of it.
And it's not always pretty.
I'm tired, but I can't sleep. I'm exhausted... mentally. I cannot shut my brain off. Wine used to do that for me. It'd help me forget that I could feel. And for someone who feels - a lot - not just for herself but for other people as well, learning how to cope with those feelings after being able to shut them out for so long is draining. To say the least.
So for the past {almost} three weeks, I have had feelings. Lots of them. And I'm trying to learn to own them instead of shove them away and hide from them. I don't want to hide anymore. I want to live fully, and part of life is having feelings.
They're not all bad. The other day I saw a few empty bottles of booze at my brother's apartment. For a moment, panic struck as I wanted to lean over his recycling bin and smell them {sick, I know... } But then the image of a scene in Finding Nemo came to mind. Where a bunch of sharks are holding a Fish are Friends, not Food meeting {similar to an AA meeting... } and they each bring a fish friend to show they're abstaining from eating their friends. But one of the fish gets hit with a diving mask and bleeds a little {if you haven't seen the movie, it makes no sense, but I know most of you have kids who've seen the movie at least once!} So then one of the sharks, who has given up eating fish, gets a whiff of the fish's blood, and a crazed look comes across his face. The other sharks see and yell "INTERVENTION!!!!" and race to their shark friend, trying to free him of his inner demons.
Thinking of that scene made me laugh. Made me feel a little bit lighter faced with my enemy.
So about these feelings, not all of them are bad. Some of them are trying. Some of them make me want to hid out under my covers. Some are sweet, and some are funny.
No matter what they are, I'm feeling them. All of them. Embracing, even. Laying out a warm welcome with hot tea and banana muffins.
They're making me whole, filling the dark spots in my soul with bright, brilliant light.