To express one’s feelings or thoughts unselfconsciously and without restraint.

This is how I yearn to live. This is how I yearn to love.

But I don’t. At least not the majority of the time.

At some point over the years, it became harder and harder to express both sadness and joy. The tears do not come easily. Excitement does not either.

Lately, though, I’ve been reflecting on the moments where they do come easily, where I feel closer to free. It has been a more recent realization that I even have these moments. They do not happen often, but I think they are happening more often than they used to. For that I am grateful.

In the last 14 months, I can identify very clearly the moments when the tears fell so freely. Saying goodbye to him. My nephew. Born 14 months ago this week. I feel the knot in my throat just writing about it. With him the love was instantaneous and easy. And so is the expression of joy and sadness.

Watching him grow has brought undeniable joy. His giggles. His babbling. His wobbly walking. His growls (yes, he growls 😊). In response, I laugh. I act silly. I bounce around singing Baby Shark.

Leaving him brings pain every single time. I feel sadness for the moments I do not get to see.

This is uncomplicated love. This is love in its purist form. And I feel safe to express the feelings associated with this kind of love. I do not feel shame and I do not hold back.

There is another time I can point to when I experienced a joy so real that it just seeped out of me. My trip to Greece in September 2018. I was surrounded by beauty that seemed surreal. I was truly and completely living in the moment. Unlike any trip I’d ever gone on before, I went to Greece by myself as part of an REI Adventures trip and there I met the 17 other women I would be traveling with. Leading up to the departure and en route, it was both terrifying and liberating at the same time. Once I was there, it was only liberating. Like the love for my nephew, the connection to most of the women was immediate. I felt comfortable opening up and leaning into the vulnerability. By the end of the 10 days we went from strangers to friends and a couple of those friendships have lasted to today.

Why can’t I live this way more often? Why can’t it just come naturally? I want so badly for it to be easy.

Even after years of therapy, most of the time, I’m guarded. The walls are still up. I attach in unhealthy ways. Unless of course you are a baby or a complete stranger that I may or may not ever see again. Ugh.

It is hard to not get paralyzed in the frustration of this realization. To realize it is possible to live so fully, but, yet be aware of how most of the time you don’t. Instead, most of the time you are uncomfortable by the affection from others. Compliments make you noticeably agitated so you follow them with some good ole self-deprecating humor. You feel the need to hide your accomplishments. And when you are hurt, you pretend you saw it coming or you yell, “I didn’t need you”. You grip the figurative wheel a bit tighter to convince yourself you are okay. But why do I have to be okay?

In therapy, I was talking about how I’ve still been unable to cry about my condo flooding. I’ve been unable to feel any real sadness that I lost so many belongings, let alone had to experience it at all. Instead, my mom felt the sadness for me. She could cry for me. I could not cry for myself. On my own behalf.

I found myself saying, “I had to keep it together to get through it. There was no time for breaking down.”

One of my group members asked why I couldn’t do both. Can’t I be sad and still “get through it”? Does sadness mean you are somehow not getting through it? Was there really no time to cope?

The answer is yes. A million times yes. It can be both and there is always time to cope (because, you know, that whole life is gray thing).

I’ve learned that there are conditions that allow me to feel safe to express myself. But maybe there is more to it than safety. Was it not safe to feel sadness or was it that sadness isn’t one of my acceptable emotions to feel? Or maybe it is that we only feel safe when we feel an emotion or behavior that we’ve learned is acceptable. Maybe safety and acceptance is linked.

So I’m here to tell myself (and you if you need to hear this too) that it is absolutely acceptable to feel a full range of emotions when you need to feel them. If I ever flood again, I better have moisture coming from my eyes and not just through my backdoor. 😊

Cue ‘The Emotion’ by BØRNS