Feel all the feelings

Sometimes it's hard to have feelings.  I think of it along the lines of that scientific rule which states for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  With sunshine comes rain, and so on and so forth.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm an emotional person.  I wear my heart on my sleeve and literally cannot watch those ASPCA commercials on TV because I am a hot mess by the time Sara McLaughlin finishes her touching melody about arms and angels, and all I know by the end is that I want to SAVE ALL THE ANIMALS!  

But I digress. 

On a slightly more serious note, February was an emotional month.  I had a lot of thoughts swimming around in my overactive think tank, some which I'm not quite ready to divulge to my three readers on cyberspace, but a lot of my thoughts were nostalgic in nature and had me missing people, places, things from my childhood, and a whole lot of stuff in-between.  I would be sitting at my desk and suddenly have this overwhelming urge to talk with my Grandma.  My mind would randomly flash back to family gatherings and I would start to miss those family members I don't get to see or talk with anymore.  I wasn't a walking sad sack, but I was definitely more vulnerable than usual. 

Most of the time, when I get to feeling this way, I do my best to stifle the emotions, to push the thoughts to the back of my mind and focus on other things.  And yet I'm not entirely sure this is the right thing to do.  Sometimes I think it's better to just let the feelings wash over you.  Not to necessarily wallow in grief because it isn't about being sad or upset.  It's about remembering.  About appreciating.  And yes, there is a bit of pain with the hurt of missing a person or persons, and that's okay.  But there's also a lot of joy in those memories, and once you allow yourself to get past the sadness, that joy is something that is worth revisiting. 

Sometimes I'm afraid that I romanticize my past, that I look back on things as being better than they used to be.  Do we all do that to a certain extent?  I'm sure this is true to some degree, but for the most part I feel I'm a pretty impartial judge to my past.  I remember the bad stuff, the painful stuff, and the pretty awesome stuff, each in its own right.  And with the remembering comes the feelings.  And while I don't want to be one of those people who is always looking back, sometimes it's not always a bad thing, not always something that needs to be tucked away.

Even though I am often ruled by my emotions, sometimes I have to remind myself that it's okay to feel certain things, and to let myself go through those feelings in their entirety.  I can't be afraid to feel all my feelings.....sometimes it starts out kind of rough, but in the end it's usually for the best.  A strange lesson to have to learn, but an important one nonetheless.