I Try To Shut My Emotions Down So I Can Feel Less

I’m used to shutting parts of myself off to feel less. I’m used to blaming others for my inner issues. “You made me this way” comes out of my mouth more than I want it to. Those ugly emotions like resentment, bitterness, and pettiness are my natural defense mechanisms against anything I feel threatened by.

I do not share my emotions. I act out my emotions via long text message rants at 12 am and self-destructive tendencies, aka tequila shots when I have a paper due the next day. I can be my best friend and own worst enemy, because I call the shots.

At the end of the day, I allow myself to be bothered about what someone said or did to me. I allow myself to feel angry and disappointed for expecting something out of someone that wasn’t inherently guaranteed to me.

But the only person I can be accountable for is me. My opinions, my feelings, my interests, my sorrows and joys. I am in charge. There is no crash dummy in the driver’s seat holding my life hostage. Just me, myself and I.

So if I dictate what is important to me and what isn’t, then why do I use my struggles as an excuse to bulldoze through people that are just trying to help me? Am I so dense that I can’t understand that not everyone gets me and not everyone has to?

It is perfectly fine to feel alone as long as you can be happy with yourself. If you hide your discomforting thoughts from yourself, then you can’t be alone anymore, because guess what will happen the second you are? All of the unexpressed bullshit will rise to the surface like a dead body in a river, leaving you unsure of what the hell is going on and how to fix the situation.

I have spent a great deal of time avoiding some nasty truths about myself, like how much attention I give the opinions of others. I don’t care what kind of person you ask, if they say they have never cared about the opinions of society, they are lying through their teeth.

We all put parts of ourselves under the microscope, either through late night overthinking in bed or on the internet via social media. We are constantly analyzing pieces of ourselves and where we fit in this chaotic world. How others perceive us matters. We want the maximum amount of likes on our selfies, because we like feeling accepted, because it makes validating ourselves easy.

The hardest lesson comes when we stop running to these platforms to tell us it’s okay to be a certain way, and start being who we are inside. If you suppress yourself, then you will always be a caterpillar and will never morph into a monarch.

It is okay to be afraid and to pay attention to shit that shouldn’t matter. Just have the courage to say it won’t always be like this, and start validating your own damn self little by little every single day.