Making Sense of Feelings (Leah)

I woke up not happy. Does that ever happen to you? I could blame it on staying up late – but that doesn’t always make me unhappy. You know what did it? I’ll tell you. I stayed up late thinking of unhappy things. Then after sleeping on those unhappy thoughts, and likely having unhappy dreams, I woke up unsettled. So what do you do when you wake up all unsettled like? Well, I need to process my feelings. I need to get them out of me so I can face my day. I don’t do well dwelling on unhappy things. So I pulled out the journal and did some scripture reading. It helped. But I noticed my first period suffered a bit because of my mood. They weren’t as engaged – first period rarely is – but today I noticed they were acting the way I felt. I really believe that people go around reflecting each other more often than not. My unsettled mood left them a bit distracted. Anyway, I want some of your input on the topic that left me a bit confused last night. I was trying to understand my emotions in relation to dating. I was trying to figure out why it is people feel fearful and insecure about dating. Why is it that we fear rejection – even before there’s a sign of it? In all my opportunities of dating and breaking up I’ve learned how to get over the feeling of rejection. I’ve learned how to fight it. But still, when I’m in the middle of a good relationship, feelings of fear creep up. Like sitting at the doctor’s, watching the nurse move about, and fearing the impending needle poke. Usually the poke is manageable. Usually I get over it just fine – maybe I’m sore for the day – but I recover. Just like a relationship that doesn’t work. So why do I fear it? I don’t think nurturing fears is good AT ALL. I think fear feeds fear. I think it only muddles things up – so how does a person refuse to hear it? And isn’t fear sometimes a good thing? Isn’t it a good warning sign at times? I fear going Latin dancing – I think that’s a pretty good fear to pay attention to. I know that dating has always led to a degree of heart break, but I don’t regret having done any of it. The pain has probably caused me to build up some fear, but I don’t think it’s the good fear that’s worth listening to. There were other positive results from those many heart breaks.

I’ll tell you what I came up with this morning. After spewing a bit in the journal I opened up the scriptures and read about healing. It was the section of the index that came open and it seemed mostly relevant. I turned to a passage in the D&C. It talked about how healing requires tenderness and love. Can’t argue there. Then a couple verses later it said something about weeping for those who die. Having experienced this sort of loss I could relate to it. I could see that it is more than okay to weep for someone who has died. Then it said something like how much sadder it is when someone dies without the hope of the resurrection. I know that when I’ve had to process the grief related to death I’ve been extremely grateful for the hope of the resurrection. I wondered to myself then, how a breakup is like death. It’s the death of a relationship you shared with another person (I like to believe it’s like a third person – there’s you, him, and then the “us”) – the “us” has died. Usually in terms of breakups we lack the hope of resurrection. I always force the hope of friendship – I think that’s my way of having a resurrection of sorts, and after all, there’s the hope of a new “us” with another “him.” But the scriptures said it is okay to weep for death. We all fear the time we will be sad, but since death is inevitable wouldn’t it be better to just accept it and give yourself permission to weep? Just have to be sure you have a hope of the resurrection. Now don’t get me wrong out there in blog land – I’m not going through any breakup – I was just wondering about the fears that creep up in relationships and how to distinguish between those feelings to find truth.