“And then you start to release
And often, in the release, there is a closing of the heart because you don’t want to get hurt again and you got to allow that, that’s still part of the grief reaction
And a lot of you are still holding on to the grief from previous hurts and then comes the time when you start to realize you’d rather be vulnerable and be hurt
Than be living dead”
- Ram Dass, Be Here Now
In hearing this quote circulating over and over in my mind I realize,
In order to have the most control over every emotion experienced by the mind, you must allow for sorrow to take up its residence within the soul. It must not fully overtake the mind to the point of clouding one’s thoughts, but just enough to open the heart in a release of tension that needs acknowledgement. Catharsis does not involve a huge show of reddened eyes or visible sobs or shows of emotion, but rather an opening of the mind to knowing the current state of your consciousness.
Even if we have already been processing the grief from an emotionally heavy event (my grandfather passed away in 2021, my grandmother in ‘22), there can still be emotions and energy that are awakened by any source acting as a trigger (a photo, a quote, or an object, name or location that serves as a reminder of an emotional time)
Though it has been difficult. I thought the process was over, but it never really will be. Sure, it won’t be the dominant thought in our day-to-day lives, but rather an afterthought or a piece of the universal puzzle that shapes one’s state of mind.
My relationship with emotion has always been difficult. Once I started to hit puberty by 8, everything changed, and my body began developing and changing appearance in ways I didn’t exactly want it to, and even so 11 years later, I still grapple with looking at myself and not being so sure the being on the other side is me.
As I grew older, my relationship with my emotions (particularly the negative ones) along with my neurodivergence became a complex, and perhaps a very frustrating and turbulent one. I knew I was different from other people. Going to a school where kids were on entirely different parts of the spectrums than I was didn’t exactly help because there weren’t really any kids who were like me. I wouldn’t discover this until around high school, where I met my good friend Juno.
And so, at the age of 10, things began getting harder. I started having anxiety, and coupled with my first period, I didn’t like getting attention when I wasn’t in a good place. If I was experiencing any negative emotions in public, if it was anxiety, I would often crunch it down, but end up in a disastrous mess, and the same thing would happen with my anger. I had a powerful temper, and any minor situation would end with me lashing out at the people around me, and even now I deeply regret this.
Sorrow was my biggest enemy. Crying was embarrassing, and I began to think I’d seem immature or a huge idiot or a fool for crying in public, or crying at all, and if anyone saw my face crumple, or my eyes well up, people would start asking questions, and even if they meant well, it would be embarrassing. So I started suppressing most of my negative emotions, hoping that the harder I pushed myself down, they’d go away, but they didn’t. They never disappeared, but ended up leaving me reacting in ways too big or small to fit a situation, or barely feeling anything, or feeling dead inside at times, or if I ever did feel anything, I’d simply hide until I couldn’t sense the presence of anyone who was within earshot, but “Letting it out” often involved me quietly berating myself to shut up and stop crying like a bitch until the feeling finally left but not without a painful, tight pang inside of me.
After I started birth control at 12 to regulate my periods, everything seemed fine, until 4 years later, it wasn’t. I was 16. Grandpa passed away, and I had fallen to pieces. 3 weeks would go by like clockwork until right before my period, I had a mini breakdown, and it felt like metaphorically my mind was crying black. I couldn’t stop the thoughts, the emotions or the energy. After calling my doctor, and getting “Just 3 more months.” as an answer, I couldn’t go on like this, and after realizing what I had become, I stopped cold turkey. I’m in a better place, and inactive mushroom powder has helped me immensely, but I realize that in suppressing your sorrow, you end up hurting yourself, having issues, and severing your mind with your body, and if you’ve been doing it without ever noticing, you’ll never know when there will be a point in your life where you go through your day and your thoughts as nothing more than a shell of a person, filled with unexplained somatic pain, emptiness, and the crippling feeling of being dead inside. There is a fine line, but we must first realize that in order to further grow, go deeper into what it means to be, we must experience the pain of it, and realize that having moments of vulnerability is why we are alive and can experience a higher level of awareness. Feelings of sorrow don’t have to be a public thing. Even if you only ever let it take up residence in private, some of it is still powerful, but necessary, as without it, we wouldn’t be able to experience the greatest joys of our lives. The journey never stops, but despite some of the things learned that might not be right to me, I can still learn a different way, one less bent on pushing everything away, and as my mother once quoted (from another source, paraphrased) “You can grow a backbone, but you need the softness of the heart in order to be able to see and feel to your greatest extent, learn from it, honor it, and eventually let it pass.”
For that is how you avoid emotionally becoming living dead.