My Valentine for You: An Un-Valentine

I actually forgot it was Valentine's day today. When I did remember I did not get all excited. It is just a day, right?  But it really isn't just a day, is it? It is a day that can bring up a lot of emotion. For many of us it is about feelings that were inserted into our hearts when we were young, feelings of not being pretty or good enough. Commercialism did a number on us. Even when I finally did receive the cards and flowers that Industry told me I should want I still felt like I a fraud, like I didn't deserve them.
Lately I feel like all my emotions are on high alert. Well no, that is not true. Just the "bad" emotions. Sadness, frustration, despair and loneliness.They all seem heightened. I don't like these feelings. They seem like they are going to sink me. These feelings have been going on so long now I don't even know what I feel anymore. Just numbness. It is a terrible place to be. 

But then I opened my inbox this morning I received this and I think it warrants passing on. It is from a website called Hopeful World. 

source

Feel it, people.

Whatever it is that’s brewing under there. Today is the day.

So whatdya got?

Joy? Frustration? Rage?
Happiness? Hope? Bliss?

The ability to feel is one of our greatest assets but it’s also the very thing that almost immediately goes under siege when anything at all happens that jolts us out of our skin. Pain, of any kind at all, emotional, physical, psychic, completely jacks with our internal safety system. Too many days of not knowing what to do with those moments and before you know it, you’re just not aware of feeling that much anymore. You just start thinking things about how you might be feeling, but you don’t really know anymore.

I mean, at all.

Everything gets a little numb. And so, on a day, like Valentine’s Day when you are bombarded with emotion of every single artificial variety, you can just kind of go blank.

What is all the fuss about? What is going on? And all of it feels kind of silly. Or worse, maybe even a little dumb.

Let’s be real here. Valentine’s Day is totally made up. It doesn't actually mean anything, and if you don’t like it, that’s totally fine. OR if you LOVE it, like I do, and have already listened to fourteen 80′s love songs, that’s fine, too.

But what’s not fine is all the numbness and not caringness because there’s just no room to even try to feel anything you're actually feeling anymore. Not even the tiniest shred of sensation, because you really don't do that anymore. Because most of the time, all any of us end up doing whatever is we think we're supposed to be doing and just going through the motions.

I’d like to propose three things this Valentine’s Day.
1. How you feel matters.

2. You deserve to know what that feeling is exactly.

3. You're really going to be okay if you actually feel it. I swear. I promise.

I say all this as someone who says “It’s fine” at least five time a day, during the times especially, when something in particular is NOT fine.

I say this as someone who has inconvenient feelings at times, like the rush of love when everyone else is being measured and calm.

I say this as someone who has locked many a door and cried in the bathroom because crying at the dinner table would have been so strange and impossible to explain.

I say this as someone who feels bored and listless and numb until I realize it’s really something more like disappointed, hopeless or grief.

Today, I invite you on this day of demand when you are required to feel so many feelings, to simply and honestly, feel your own. The ones that are truly there, not the ones everyone else wants you to have. And if this is tricky for you, as it sometimes is for me, I recommend lying down on your bed or getting comfortable in a chair and going over your whole body in your mind, like you would with a newborn baby, and asking each part what it’s feeling right now, and wait, yes wait, for the honest, inevitable answer.

Will you try it?

With a heart full of joy and gratitude for you,

Jen