Anger, sadness, happiness, pride, envy, joy, etc. All emotions we feel from day to day. Growing up, I definitely felt anger, sadness, envy a lot. I was also happy and joyous, but the negative emotions were prominent in my life. MY brothers always knew the right thing to say to just piss me right off. And when I say angry, I don't mean got to go into the other room and cool off angry. I mean, I smacked my brothers around when they acted out against me. I would be filled with rage, a rage that would take me a few hours to cool off from.
My dad would say little things that just got to me and made me so sad, and I'd want to cry, but we didn't deal with that at my house. If I cried, I had to do it in my room. If my dad saw, he'd give me something to cry about. He thought he was toughening me up or something. I don't know. But we didn't really deal with negative emotions all that well in that house considering how much negative emotions we were given. I'd be upset about something one way or the other every single day.
Going to college, I had reprieve. I loved my roommate, and everyone was super nice and friendly. The professors were pretty cool, and they had intramural sports I could participate in. I didn't work much, and I had made amazing friends. I had nothing to be angry or upset about. This continued for the three years I was in school. I went home, and my family would be so happy to see me that they didn't fight and argue with me because they didn't want to waste my trip by fighting.
So, for three years, I can honestly say I was only ever upset a couple times, and sad maybe a little less than that. I felt joy and happiness 99% of the time. It was such a switch, and I thrived in it. I grew into a wonderful human being who can handle her own, who had her emotions in check.
Or so I thought.
Turns out, after three years of not really dealing with emotions all that well, I have completely forgotten how to handle certain emotions. When something sad happens in a movie, and it does affect me a bit, I laugh. When my mom told me about how my cousin used to molest me, I couldn't stop smiling, and I played it off as a joke because I couldn't feel sad. I didn't want to be sad.
And when Joe made me cry one day when I was home alone, it was like the floodgate opened and every single terrible emotion I had been repressing just overwhelmed me. I had never felt so shitty in my whole life. It wasn't good.
I'm not sure how this will affect me in the future, but it's interesting how I've latched onto those positive emotions so wholeheartedly and when anything negative happens, I just take it in stride. I don't want to be phased by things that make me feel enraged and angry and upset. But, who does?
I was curious if any of you are like this or if it's just me.
