Feeling feelings is hard

I recently made the decision not to pursue something that I reeeallly really (really) wanted to do.

Saying No to this thing (or more accurately, not running after it to say hello! Yes! me!, because although it was available, it’s not as if it was knocking on my door saying oh Eileen I need you!) was super hard.

It hurts now. I feel like I might get left behind. Like this might be the one and only greatest thing ever and I just missed out.

It was such a pretty, exciting, shiny new thing.

I would have learned so much and had so much fun.

(Just typing that makes a little achey spot form in my throat.)

Oh, thing. I’m so sad I chose not to have you.

It’s hard to feel grief and sadness.

It makes sense to want to avoid feeling them.

It’s tempting to think that if I only make the right choice I won’t have to feel them.

It’s tempting to think that grief and sadness are indicators I did something wrong.

It’s tempting to try to fix something dammit so I don’t have to feel grief and sadness.

It’s really tempting to try to make all my decisions in order to to strategically avoid grief and sadness. (Or, well, it would be if I hadn’t already spent years doing that. Surprise, it didn’t work.)

It ain’t just a poem

The problem is that any choice at all, even the choice to not make a choice, closes off other options. (It’s that confounded space-time continuum that screws everything up. Grrr.)

When I have pizza for dinner I can’t have a veggie burger for dinner.

Now, for me there’s not a huge amount of loss associated with not having a veggie burger for dinner, since I can always have one tomorrow night.

But if I don’t take this opportunity, then I can’t have it, period.

I get other things. Like, money. And time. Space. Calmness.

But I don’t get this thing.

Allowing

Right now, I’m feeling the feelings.

I give them permission to be there (they’re right here tapping me on the shoulder saying hello, we’re not going anywhere so I might as well! They like to laugh at me a little bit, actually.)

And once again, the allowing opens it all up.

I had good reasons for not pursuing the thing. I’m not pretending I don’t feel grief and sadness, or trying to shove them down in case they make me question myself. But I’m also not changing my mind, or running around in reactive-mode, trying to change stuff in order to avoid them.

Because I’d feel other, different hard feelings if I pursued the thing. Either way there is loss.

So here they are. Grief and sadness. Right here within me. (Along with a whole hell of a lot of other stuff.)

The allowing brings me to a place where I can see how much more there is inside of me than just these bad feelings. Some relief. A sense of contentment at the way things are right now, without the thing. How many feelings can exist all at once.

How this grief and sadness might, just might, not be permanent, OMG all there is forever and ever.

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