A Pustule of Emotion

“I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don’t want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus—a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.” –Nicolas Cage

I wrote once that I felt like I had the emotional capacity of a teaspoon. I think I’d read that somewhere else, so it’s probably plagiarism if I say that was an original tough, but I felt like it suited me. I valued intellect and ambition as a teenager and as much as I did feel emotions and try to love, I know I hardly ever let myself truly feel all the emotions my soul wanted me to experience.
In the past few years, I’ve made some more conscious efforts and decisions to feel more.
To feel better.
(Better as an adverb.)

And sometimes that sucks. Because it means I cry more. It means I feel less stable. It means I’m more at war with myself trying to figure out how I feel and how to act upon those feelings.

Sometimes it’s easy to discern.
Sometimes it’s not.
Actually, most of the time it’s not.
And the ice cream only numbs the feelings I’m trying to figure out

Sometimes I know I’m feeling…something…really strongly. But I don’t know what it is exactly. I can’t dissect it enough to know what proportions of what feelings are there or what events and people those emotions actually correlate with. School, work, dating, religion, future ambitions: it could be something from any of those. And then there are so many subcategories that it is simply exhausting to actually feel.



But even though it can suck to feel bad feels or be stressed about not knowing how you’re feeling, it’s awesome to feel good things.
LIKE REALLY INCREDIBLE.

And the more you’re willing to let yourself feel negative emotions, the greater range you are giving yourself for joy as well.

Which means much in between as well.

It’s good to cry.
A lot.
Because ain’t no one want to turn into a festering pus ball.

And I’ve been there.
And I don’t want to go back to pus.


So feel the feels and keep good, bad, middle, and who-knows what other kind of emotions close to the surface.

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