There isn’t much chatter between us. The thick cloud of life’s emotional realities follows our car homeward in the night. “The past few months have been crazy,” I say. And you tell me, “I know. It’s okay.” You drive the state highway at night. In your tiny sedan we dash past cheap New Jersey gas stations that light up our periphery, while I ask the full moon how to stop hurting. You tell me to hold your hand. You tell me to give you my heavy feelings, as if your grip is stronger than the heartache tearing my soul apart, or any fear daring to tell me, “There’s no way out. Give up now.” You tell me to give you my heavy feelings. You tell me you will hold them for tonight, and that if I let you guard me from them, they will be returned to me in the morning, appearing as something else. They will make a little more sense.
Imagine that. What an idea. If only there was a way to hold onto someone else’s emotional mess — just so they can sleep for a night, breathe for a night, be for a night.
While your eyes track the straightaway, I play a game in my head: “What if?” What if I did hand you my feelings? What if you could put them away for a while? What if I’ll feel you later is all I need to say? What if I could see them differently? I place my hand in yours, and you harness your power to wrangle up all my mess: my shadowish, sinful secrets; my shameful, guilty regrets; my tearful past, and my egg-shelled future.
That night, laying in a dark room with my eyes wide open, I considered whether my heavy feelings are intentionally weighing me down, or if maybe they aren’t to blame at all. All the time, things are what they truly are. Failing in your pursuits to change anything is your own fault. Because why would you try to change what already is?
If you feel anger, be angry. That isn’t the same thing as violence. If you feel lust, be lustful. That isn’t the same thing as self-degradation. If you feel jealousy, be jealous. That isn’t the same thing as possessiveness. But if you attempt to turn anger into a disingenuous smile, or lust into love, or jealousy into resentful acceptance, you must ask yourself: What’s better—feeling a feeling that doesn’t feel good, or convincing yourself that you feel differently?
But could it be that bad feelings can naturally transform into something more bearable, more comfortable, more familiar, if we acknowledge them for what they truly are? If we don’t try to change them? If we give them the space to be felt? Maybe my pain wants to be heard. Maybe my pain wants to be seen. Maybe my pain wants to be felt. Because every time my pain wants to cry, or wail, or just express —I silence the soulful song of my heart.
You should know this: when you held onto my heavy feelings for that one single night, I saw them clearer the next morning. I saw them for what they truly are. I saw them for what they represent. No longer do I push my feelings away. I let them be themselves, and I am unafraid when they show up in my life. The more I let myself grow into them, the more stylish they are to wear, the more familiar they become.
I decided to follow up with the full moon. I tell her that I don’t want to stop hurting anymore. That it’s a blessing to know what pain feels like. That it’s impossible to know beauty without it. That neither can exist without the other. In a burst of realization, I recognize:
You exist at the intersection of darkness and light. You aren’t quite as luminous as the sun, yet you reveal its strength when there is only darkness. You carve a path and set a direction for me when I otherwise would not see a way forward.Because of you, the darkness becomes bearable.
So, when the setting sun makes you sad, let yourself reflect on the strength of your light, the way the moon reflects the sun. Teach yourself how to walk in the night, and how to find your way in the dark, with a confident knowing that the sun will come again.