After decades of avoidance, I was dead inside

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After decades of avoidance, I was dead inside. I started 1 uncomfortable habit this week to return to life: A story for those who bury their feelings deep. ... ...[]

Professionally, I'm a direct communicator with others. With myself though, my track record is dubious at best. Repress and repel. Keep moving forward. Tighten it down. Feel dead inside if you have to. Better to feel too dead than too alive.

I was 12 years old, eating under-seasoned green beans at the dinner table, when I found out my dad's cancer was one of the bad incurable kinds. The doctors gave him 5 years max. He made it 3. Maybe that's where this all started.

By college, I had a minor tick from certain emotions. Only a few times a day. I think I hid it well. Usually I could pass the jerk off as a sneeze or a chill. . There were shards of glass under my skin. My body was trying to let them out. .

I never, ever cried. Not for my dad or anything else.

When I was old enough to buy booze, I busied my over-active mind with 3 jobs when the sun was out, and spent what I earned on beer and vodka when the sun went down. Not to get drunk but to add a buffer between me and *me*. It worked. The ticks began to go away.

"It's like you don't even care?" she said. "You're not even reacting." I can't recall which girlfriend that was. It may have been all of them. I'd gotten so good at repression, I couldn't stop the emotional shutdown even if I wanted to.

As years passed, and I felt maybe ready to try being a vulnerable man. I talked a little bit about feelings. Sometimes. The way people expect you talk about it. Starting at the surface is starting somewhere. And starting at all was more than nothing. It went really well.

I tried to talk about how I felt again. but this time it wasn't my turn. People needed me to be strong again. Like usual. Like I always am. The strong one. It never felt like my turn to share again. So I stopped trying.

Six months ago, I quit alcohol. It was like someone stole the sacred artifact holding the tomb of repression together. Demons were coming out of the walls. The place was collapsing in the most dramatic way. Everything terrible I'd ever swallowed, coming out all at once.

My head jerked sharply. Instead of processing the feelings, the tick pushed the memory back into its hiding place. I pictured a layer of reflective glass covering my body. I was safe. Nobody could see inside.

But I wasn't safe. My old tricks had stopped working. The feelings came right back, carrying more memories up with them in the process. The booze had been the magic potion all along. Without it, I couldn't just repress anymore.

It turns out that difficult memories still have to pass through you to get out. You can't just delete them. (They don't actually leave.) . It's like a song without an ending. Want to get a song out of your head? You have to sing the ending to finish it. .

So, journaling. That's what I'm doing now. 5 minutes a day, just writing whatever comes to mind. To let the feelings pass through. To have a conversation with the page, if I can't with anyone else. And I'm already feeling lighter for it.