Photo by SHVETS production via Pexels
I guess this poem is actually an exercise. I had been playing around with the idea of acknowledging, naming and understanding emotions and feelings.
That is easier said than done, specially if that is not an ability you had not already possessed. It is a muscle that can learn to flex, but despite the rationalization that you go through when you try to acknowledge feelings, feeling them is an entirely different thing.
Unexpectedlly, this piece soon turned into a dialogue between me and a feeling I had trouble understanding and welcoming in. Intellectualizing your emotions only goes so far before they hijack your whole body because you thought that doing so would make it go away. It didn’t. It doesn’t, because actually feeling emotions in our body is terrifying and a big part of us want to run away. This was specifically eye opening to me after reading Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.
Acknowledging feelings is about learning that feelings will come and go and they need to flow, otherwise they will not go anywhere. And if you are wondering about my emotion’s “gender”, most of my stronger emotions come to me as females, like me. You’ll see that in more poems, I refer to them as “she/her”.
Do you agree? Let me know!
On acknowledging feelings
It started from within
I tried giving it a name so it knew I was there
I called it Frustration
I said her name and told her why I was there
So she would go away
She didn't.
So she called for tears and pressure on my chest
But I told her that it was ok
But she sent for more tears, adding more of her own
That was when my hands went up and I told her:
"I am sorry. It didn't work"
And Frustration was there again - and more strong
When she finally was understood.
When I heard frustration's voice for the first time in my life
She said,
"Acknowledging is not the same as feeling it".