For my This I Believe Project, I chose to explain that to express and fully experience negative emotions is not negative within itself. I used the experience with my journey of learning how to emotionally process being diagnosed with a chronic illness that can only be treated by frequent brain surgeries. I think something that stood out about my writing is that I am very emotionally involved with my words and I love to express myself vividly, uncensored and honestly. I like to bring the reader into my world so, they can understand.
Potent Emotion
I absorbed every emotion in the cold, white hospital room as the diagnosis was being confirmed by the black and white images.
“Brain tumor... Blocking... Flow... Urgent... Operation... Chronic... Miracle.”
Like the doctors, I remained calm and nervous but with the burden of holding both my parents and my emotions captive. I gently asked to go to the bathroom once everything was settled and there, I freed my acrimony into the mirror across from me and made an aggressive promise in my heart:
You will never cry in front of anyone ever again.
Ever since I was eight years old, I have thought that any negative emotion was oppressive to others. With that, I believed in order to keep peace, I must remain without the evidence that I am angry or sad. I walked out of the bathroom with red, swollen eyes but yawned as if acting fatigued would mask the state of my spirit that was no longer made of kickball, mystery suckers, and zebra print bows. There were ladies waiting in the room with an I.V. kit and as they began to search my arm full of luscious blue and green veins, I necessitated myself to watch them as they followed the needle into my arm.
As I got older, my skin got thicker and thicker through every surgery and I hardly showed my struggling spirit. Four surgeries in one-week and glued to a hospital only allowed being able to cry at night when my mom was worried asleep. With every beep of the I.V. pole, every squeeze of the blood pressure monitor, I had become a machine, just like them: functioning but emotionless. It was my junior year, when the dam I had built could no longer hold my burdens. I found myself so overwhelmed after of ten years of trauma, broken by the world. Empty bottles, careless boys, and numb parties seemed to take the edge off. I was pretty at taking the edge off.
I remember walking into his bedroom. His room was musty, his bed was messy, his closet was on the floor and his computer screen was his escape. I remember walking into a party. The air was hazy, tables covered in cheap beer, and lonely bodies unaware of their surroundings. I remember the bottle of bitter water hidden in my jewelry cabinet that was as hard to swallow as the trauma I was trying to recapture and tuck it away. At the end of my junior year before my tenth surgery, I began telling my story and be emotionally vulnerable with those closest to me. That season was full of unguarded and dysfunctional emotion, but at least I was trying.
In the past six months, my therapist said one thing that made me break down:
“Your emotions are not a burden. You don’t have to protect your parents, your friends and yourself from your story. With a story comes all types of emotions. Let them out and be honest with yourself and others. Your emotions are not a burden.”
Your emotions are not a burden. That statement has stuck in my head ever since and liberated me from the prison that was once full of starving grievance. The ultimate oppression was not being honest with myself and how I felt. It ended up hurting me and others more than it would if I would have just cried, screamed, and yelled. I now believe in the power of vulnerability, the potency of my story, and honesty with those around me and not trying to mask the trauma I’ve been through.
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