Everybody Else's Feelings

 Herself speaks.

This is a tricky point in personal history right now, as lovely Daddy's decline continues apace. The members of my Family of Origin (brother, sister, mother, Daddy, and I) are all coping in differing ways and with varying degrees of success with the current state of affairs and the shadows of Things To Come. Emotions are colored by half-a-century-or-more of relationships, old hurts, current states-of-relationships, imported feelings from external relationships beyond the Family of Origin, and more. It's a lot. Beyond the emotions, there are the mundane conversations: how many days of home health care are necessary? Beyond necessary, how many more should there be, to ensure safety and sanity and peace of mind for all involved? Who is capable and willing to do what? We would all do everything if we could. We cannot. Resources must be deployed to fill in the gaps and bring everyone literal and metaphorical comfort. 

The hardest part for me, is that everyone else's feelings are nearly Deafening. I can hardly hear my own over everyone else's. I need to listen to mine, but others are SO LOUD that I cannot. It is frustrating. Frightening, even. I am terrified that someone is going to hand me their wailing, screeching Feelings, and I will have to somehow tend to them. No thank you. I cannot. Please do not make me. 

If it happens, I will do what I must, because I always do. Do what needs to be done. What will be the cost? Only time will tell. 

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As a youngster/teenager, I never learned how to help other people with their emotions, because in truth I did not have help with my own. I did not have a good example of how to acknowledge someone else's Feelings, how to help someone to feel Feelings safely, how to come out on the other side of an emotional difficulty and move forward. 

Even as a young adult -- or even as an adultier adult -- validation of Feelings and assistance with moving through them, has been sparse and hard-won. I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to explain my Feelings to the very few people with whom I am comfortable discussing such things, and even then I feel as though I have limited success. It's extraordinarily painful. I often don't even want to try. But I still do, because even after all this time, I still long to be understood. To be Seen.

Somehow, I am always surprised when someone is nice to me when I am experiencing Feelings.  

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I don't really know what else to say at this juncture. I am putting one foot ahead of the other, one day at a time. I don't know how much, or how little, time there is. I don't foresee anything getting easier any time soon. If I am silent, gentle reader, it is because everything around me is So Very Loud. 

We'll get there. 

Please keep my much-loved Daddy in your thoughts. 

Thank you.