Well, I've been slacking on blogging the past few weeks. However, with the upcoming week ahead of me, there is much I have to say. For those that aren't aware, Monday marks my last first day as a student. Sure once I graduate in May as a teacher I will have dozens more first days of school, but never again as a student. Excited? Yes. Scared? Yes, well more like flipping out. This fall semester will consist of me taking 19 hours, in other words.... I am going to be a zombie for almost 5 months. But, it is my last semester of classes so I know I can do it. When spring rolls around, I will be student teaching. Two words sum up my feelings for student teaching... What? Already? Yes. I am soon to be responsible for educating young minds, don't worry my panic attack is only mild right now.
Anyway, one of my yoga teachers has been stressing the fact that we as humans tend to go numb. We do this in different areas of our life. We go numb to shut out feelings, whether they be joy (because we think we don't deserve it), fear, anger, sadness, or stress. This is a learned thing for people in society. The mentality, "If I don't let myself feel it, it isn't a problem. It will go away." WRONG. Let me bear witness that I have been numbing myself toward several areas of my life because I didn't (and still don't completely) want to deal with the emotions that coincide with thinking about such areas. I won't bore you with all numb areas I have been dealing with, but I will give an example.
As I said before, I am excited about being a senior in college and finally making it to the end of a big chapter in my life. However, I'm scared to death. After I graduate I have to get a job, start paying all my bills, find my own place to live, become an adult. I know that this is a natural process in life that everyone goes through, and it is not that I think that I can't do it, because I can. But, it is sad. My mom is my best friend, I love being at home with my family. I enjoy cooking dinner for them on weekends and sleeping across the hall from my sister. Not to say once I graduate that I can't do all this from time to time, but it will be different. I am not a fan of change and when change approaches, it takes me a while to finally accept it.
So, I subconciously made the decision not to think about any of it. When people would ask if I am excited about graduating, I would say yes and change subjects. I didn't want to talk about it. Thanks to my yoga teacher confronting the class week after week about feeling and searching for the areas in our lives that we have numbed, it finally hit me. I'm in denial about the new chapter that is upcoming in my life. When I got in my car after class this past week, I let myself feel all the emotions that I have been swallowing for so long. And, I cried. I cried for a good ten minutes. And I felt better. When I went to bed last night, I cried some more. But, I cried because I needed to. Not because I am weak as I have let myself believe most of my life and not because I am sad about the exciting year I have ahead. But because when I was finally willing to choke up the emotions I was numbing myself to, they needed to come out. So, cry I did. And I'm not the least bit ashamed for telling you that I did, and probably will again.
Not only did facing what I needed to in my life make me feel better emotionally, but physically I felt better as well. I have had a dagger-like pain in my back underneath one of my shoulder blade for weeks. I stretched it in yoga, got a massage, ran mile after mile to loosen it up, and took days off to allow it to relax. Didn't matter what I did, the pain wouldn't go away. Ironically, as soon as I let myself cry and feel, that pain went away. I feel it was God's way of telling me to meet him in prayer, trust Him, and know that I had to live my life truthfully rather than hiding away aspects I wasn't ready to deal with.
I am in no way perfect and far from being at piece with every area in my life, but I wanted to share this with you in hopes that if you read this and are having some places in your life that you just choose not to feel that you would WAKE UP those emotions and face them. Cry if you have to, Scream if you need to, do whatever it is to let those emotions be felt so that you can begin to feel better. I share personal things in complete humility, knowing that I do not know everything (or anything even close to everything) but because I hope to influence others positively the way I have been blessed to be.
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