Feeling Harder: The Journey Home to Ourselves

Finally, I am sitting down. After days of hiding and avoiding, I am finally forcing myself to sit still. In my familiar corner, surrounded by nothing but silence, I am starting to exhale. I am starting to hear myself. I am starting to feel. And I am starting to enter the struggle of wanting to walk away.

I am entering the madness of hearing my thoughts and the terror of feeling my feelings.

I am thinking about my to-do list. About all the things I have been avoided doing - and feeling the familiar mixture of panic and shame. I am thinking about how hungry I am now. About my schedule tomorrow and whether should send my dog to daycare. I am thinking about my mom. Some random memories unexpectedly pops up to tell me I am still affected by them but I quickly push them away, because - who has the time now?

One could say that the world as we know it exists because of our feelings. Without all the complex emotions and unstoppable desires, we wouldn’t have ventured out to conquer the world—or dream of conquering other planets. It’s our drive, our hunger for something more, that pushes us forward, compels us to innovate, to create. But here’s the thing: despite all our accomplishments, there’s one thing we still fear more than anything else—feeling our feelings.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it? We’ve conquered lands, built cities, and explored the stars, yet when it comes to sitting still with ourselves, we’re terrified.

And modern life has perfected the art of escape. There are myriad ways to ignore our so-called difficult feelings and replace them with better ones. Our days overflow with temptation and distraction and never-ending busy-ness to fill our days and our hungry heart, without ever feeding what it really wants. And we wake up the next day and do it all over again. In a sense, we have mastered the art of abandoning ourselves.

So I am sitting here, marinating in the soup of my feelings. And it feels disorienting, confusing, awful.

But here's the thing about staying - about choosing to remain seated in this discomfort: if I allow myself to be here a while longer, the discomfort begins to soften at some point. Not on our schedule - but inevitable nonetheless. It starts to feel like knocking on a door and having someone finally open it. It feels like going home.

Through this practice of staying, I've discovered that everything I've ever dreaded facing was, at its core, just a fear of what I might be feeling. The fear was always worse than the reality. If I honor myself enough to sit with the discomfort, to let myself get there without shortcuts, I always meet the version of myself capable of doing what I thought impossible.

The path through our feelings - not around them - leads us home to ourselves. Our feelings, in all their messiness and intensity, aren't obstacles to overcome but doorways to walk through.

Sometimes the hard way is really the easy way.