emotion

I’ve got this emotion, this mood. I can’t quite identify it. I think I can’t identify it because I am emotionally unlearned, because of my Mormon upbringing where there were two emotions: of God and of Satan. Or maybe I’m just blaming that, and really, a lot of people are emotionally unaware and incapable, just like me.

Whatever the reason, I can’t decide what emotion it is and what to do about it. I tried counting. But by the time I get to seven or so, it boils up again, fierce in my chest. It makes my words bite at my son, and it makes me hide my eyes from my husband.

It’s not quite sadness, not quite anger, not quite discontent, not quite loneliness, not quite anything. But it is there. And it makes me want to scream. It’s one of those moods where I’d want to watch something depressing or hard or raw or violent or ruthless, like a realist war movie, or a tragedy, or a German movie, those ones that always end with everyone dying. You have to be in the mood to watch something like that, and this is that mood.

It makes me want to push the envelope. To leave my comfort zone and try something new, something reckless and scary and dangerous. Something that would have people saying, That doesn't seem like something she'd do.

Some people pick up a guitar and write sad songs in moods like this. Some sleep, or listen to music, or drive fast. Yeah, I want to drive fast. Too fast. That’s the mood I’m in. Make it feel like I’m driving away from it. Whatever it is. Some have a couple beers, or a cigarette or a joint. And I think, maybe I should do that. But no, I shouldn’t, that would only numb it, not confront it. Then I think of how many times I’ve ignored this emotion, or numbed it with prayer or scripture reading, and I figure those aren’t any better than chemical-induced numbing, are they, really? Anyway, I write. It’s the mood that pushes me to write. Which isn’t ignoring it; it’s confronting it, and that’s the best way to explore and tackle these things, I’ve found.

But what is it? What is it? I can’t tell.

I know what it’s not. It’s not what I grew up thinking it was. It’s not the absence of the Spirit. As a Mormon, I thought this mood, this feeling, any feeling like it, was the loss of the Spirit. And that meant I did something to make the Spirit go away. I did something bad. Something bad like swear, or have a mean thought about someone at school, or want something I shouldn’t have, or hit my brother. That’s what this was. It was my fault. My inability to be perfect--now. My fault. My own, ugly fault.

And to get rid of it, to get the Spirit back, I had to repent. To pray, to read scriptures more and more often, to ask forgiveness for being human. To obey, to sacrifice, to control my emotions, to put on a happy face, to pretend like everything is perfectly normal. Run away from the emotions, because they weren’t emotions, they were Satan trying to tempt me, to ruin me, to bring me to a miserable hell along with him.

From that, it’s taken some time to adjust to thinking of emotions as just emotions, as part of our humanness, our evolutionary biology. This down mood, this emotion I can’t name, it isn’t evil, though it is unpleasant. I wouldn’t want to stay here forever, but I don’t have to run away from it, to push it away as quick as possible, to ignore it or root it out. Instead, I explore it. I let it act as my muse, and look what it has gotten me.

A whole damn blog post.