Giving a Name to This Feeling

I do not write my blogs nearly as bluntly as I feel them, and forgive me, for this one will be no different. In all probability it will be even more shaded and verbose, hiding the nature of its subject, than most others. But that aside, let me just ponder this in writing...
I have never been good with emotion, or at least expressing it honestly. To feel emotion is to be human. Even the most hard hearted person feels, they just choose to ignore and supress. At the risk of sounding extremely redundant and simple, I feel my feelings, if you know what I mean. I feel them a great deal. Some people experience happiness in a smile or a laugh. Some people feel loneliness in just being alone and glum. Others taste desire as just a very strong want. How do you go about explaining your emotion? They are so much more than sentiments, so much more than mere words; to me they are physical experiences.
The sensation starts in my throat, just barely a tightness in my throat. It tingles down my neck, slowly making its way to my chest. the feeling undulates, coarsing through the space around my heart, where it lingers and trembles. The feeling finally makes its way home and settles in my stomach, where it feels as though the Monarch butterfly migration has just taken place. The fluttering, fanning, frenzy of a thousand tiny wings makes me nervous and excited and scared all at the same time. Most would associate this feeling with the anticipation of something good and perhaps some others, with a case of the jitters. For me it is the anticipation of something that could either be wonderful or disastrous. It is difficult at best to try and catagorize this sensation. Deep down I know why it occurs but yet I cannot exercise the least bit of control over it. In fact I despise this feeling. It causes me to lie awake for hours at night when I should be asleep. It makes me lose my appetite. I know when it is coming and I dread its arrival but I am powerless to stop it. Powerless. In that word I feel I have encapsulated my feeling. For me, Lindsay, personally and not for anyone else, this emotion I feel is like powerlessness. It is all the most primal emotions tied into one; it is fear, it is hope, it is strong desire, it is a little love, a little hate, a desperate happiness and a heart-breaking sadness. And yes it is possible to feel all these things at once! For me it is wanting something, fearing that I cannot have it, and hoping against hope that my fear is unfounded. There is only one occasion in life in which my body reacts with this unpleasant emotion. It is good though, that the feeling is rare, for it is tiresome and strength sapping to feel powerless often.
I know that this has probably made very little sense and has wasted a good five minutes of your time if you were unfortunate enough to read it. Yet some how I am not apologetic anymore. I have said what I feel in the best words I could find to convey my message. It does not have a moral, there is no way you can apply it to your life. It is simply a grammatical ride through my emotions. Honestly it has not made me feel better to write this and my throat is still tight and there are still butterflies in m stomach. I will sleep fitfully tonight and wake up with the same things on my mind. Still, my feeling now has a name and that is saying something.

Combing Life for Bliss

Life, in my opinion, is like combing a beach. Mile after mile of sand stretches out before you, each next step an opportunity to uncover a treasure. Beautiful shells, sea glass, an old, rusted skeleton key, perhaps even a coin or lost jewelry might turn up. But all that is buried beneath the sand is not good. It is a risk, beach combing, for you never know when you may come upon a broken bottle, a sharp nail, trash or something equally undesirable. Sometimes you may spend the whole day, or even a series of days, searching the sands without a single thing to show for the work. It is in this aspect that I see life. Life stretches on in front of me, every new day an opportunity to discover something great. Sometimes I spend days, weeks, even years with apparently nothing to show for the work I've done. Other times life unearths tragedy, heartache, and sadness, much like a sharp, rusted can might cause pain while sifting through sand. But ultimately, whatever wound life caused is healed and the endless search continues until death. The best thing though, when combing a beach or when plodding along through life, is when you stumble upon a tiny treasure that was a complete surprise, a thing truly unlooked for.
Often the feeling that accompanies these moments in life is bliss, one of my favorite words. Bliss, by definition is complete happiness. Now happiness, unlike joy, is circumstantial meaning that blissful moments are fleeting, still shots from a full length motion picture. Blissful moments are fireflies, one second you see the delicate green glow light up a spot in the night, the next second the light has gone, moving on into deeper shade. But this uncertainty, the very rarity of bliss is part of its appeal. Blissful moments are sweetest because they are so infrequent, so unexpected. There are only a small handful of instants in my life that I can catalog as being characterized by bliss, a feeling so sweet and wonderful that you want to laugh, weep, and lose your breath all at the same time.
Just as combing a beach seems like endless work, life often seems like drudgery. When the minutes are added up it seems that there is so much precious time wasted on the mundane, years of life spent working at a job you hate, years of life down the drain sitting in traffic, doing laundry, even sleeping. There is nothing more perfect than something that breaks the monotony of life, even if it only lasts an instant, even if it is only the briefest of glimpses into bliss. Happiness made complete, if only for that infinitesimal fragment of time. Though they are short, it seems like these moments are clearest in my memory; as sharp and technicolor in my mind's eye as if they had just occured. And it is these tiny treasures, gathered from the endless shores of life that make all the searching worth it.

The Feeling of Alone-ness

When I have spent hours and all my energy trying to fall asleep, I come to a place in my mind that I call "alone-ness". It is not a real word, of course, but it is a feeling. I have tried to catalog this feeling many times: is it depression? Is it sadness? No, it is neither, it is alone-ness. There is no one else there, no one else that can see inside the depths of my mind, only me. I will lay in my bed and think about things that do not need to be thought about in the early hours of the morning. But mostly I ponder my state of being alone.

People say they are "alone" when they are not married, or dating or involved with someone. But being alone is far more than just being deprived of a lover. Alone-ness is something that is so deeply imbedded in the heart; you could be surrounded by the multitudes and still feel the hard clutch of aloneness. I spend my time loving others, wanting them to feel excepted and special, feeding them compassion like it was medicine.

Yet on those days when I fall, when I reach the very rock bottom, I am alone. To the left, to the right, there is no one within a mile of my bleeding heart, the love and compassion I have lavished on others is lost on me. I could cry out, I could beg for love from those who are closest to my heart. I do not cry out often though, and perhaps it is only my pride that keeps me from doing so. Or maybe the reason is that when I am finally overcome by the need for help, this thing called companionship, I find myself alone. There are none to answer my cries. For reasons unknown and unrevealed to me, I am alone.

Lying alone in the dark, when gutteral cries are silenced only by exhaustion, I feel this alone-ness. I lay there and bare my heart to the only One who hears my cries. No one can share my misery, no one can share my comfort, no one can share the intimacy I feel when I am in this state; lost in thought and raw emotion, wetting my pillow with salt and water. Though they can be painful sometimes I cherish these moments of alone-ness, holding them close until the next sun rises and I give up my futile attempts at sleep.

Human Sacrifice

*This was an older blog that I wrote during my first semester of college. My English professor at the time had asked us to keep a journal...which I didn't until the day before it was due when I sat down, iPod cranked to full volume and penned 40 pages of what was supposed to be "Stream of Consciousness" writing but ended up being nonsense suffused with some really interesting (and frankly, disturbing) bits like this one.*

The PreColumbian peoples of Central and South America were frequently practioners of the rather controversial human sacrifice. Although many cultures practiced and continue to practice animal sacrifice, there were several that chose to give human blood as a more potent offering to whatever deity was to be appeased. The specific means of sacrifice that is on my mind is the removal of the human heart. In an elaborate ceremony, the heart of the sacrificial person was cut directly from the body and, in theory, held aloft while still beating. Being a rather morbid person, I ask myself, is that even possible? Would the heart continue to beat? Was the chest cracked open or did they remove the organ by means of the abdomen? I wonder, did the victim die right away or were they afforded the grotesque privilege of watching the event before they expired?
Honestly, if I were going be sacrificed in this way, and my heart was to be dug out of my chest, I would want to see it. What does that cursed lump of flesh look like? Is it small, does it still beat? What good will it do them if it caused me so much trouble? They should probably have picked someone with a cleaner slate!
The idea is much like that of our brains. We all have a brain, just as we all have a heart. My brain is the center of my person, where all my thoughts and dreams originate. Yet, I have never seen it with my own eyes. A scientist can tell me how my brain works; he can describe its parts and their functions. He could even scan it with high-tech equipment and then show me the images. I could even look at someone else's brain if I were truly curious. But I will never see my own brain. My heart is the same way.
I bet the person died or at least passed out from the pain before the act was even finished. Then again, what is pain when you are given the opportunity to look upon your own heart? Certainly it would be better to die with that knowledge than to go quickly, still unaware of the nature of your own flesh. Would I be disappointed in what I viewed? And if I was, what could be done?