You wake up from an exhausting slumber and glance at your phone beside you, realizing you have been waking up an hour later than usual these days. You chastise yourself for missing such an intense alarm. A following moment of sobriety makes you realize the emotional storm you’ve been going through lately. You forgive yourself, but then are quickly overwhelmed by the familiar sadness.
You are alertly aware that external things are affecting your emotions and keeping you from functioning. You don’t like this, so you decide to take action. You get yourself organized in the very limited time, washing up, sitting down to have a peaceful breakfast, uncharacteristically wearing make up on a weekday, and putting on a nice outfit. This series of ritual gives you the feeling of regaining control of your life. You start feeling slightly better.
This is just a snapshot of what’s been going on lately: you fall into a storm, sinking infinitely in great sadness. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the storm and look at your current situation. In that moment of awakening, you become an experimental sample of your self-observation. You switch repeatedly between waking and sinking states, struggling to find the delicate balance.
This emotional storm was triggered by the up coming separation. You actually anticipated it months ago and began preparing for it, but all the preparation was just a drop in the bucket. The emotional outburst came out of nowhere and took you by surprise. You were just walking down the street in the evening as usual, counting how many days you have left to say goodbye. Suddenly, the floodgates were opened and the sadness came in like a flood.
Most of the time you are occupied with this heavy sadness. In the occasional “awake” moments, you become aware of how intense your emotions are this time. To your surprise, you kind of enjoy it and wanna let yourself sink a little deeper. In the past, you were too used to ignoring and suppressing your emotions. This time, the extreme sadness is regarded as an improvement. You believe it’s better to have strong emotions than not to have them at all.
There are many other things you try to do when you are “awake”. For example, you chronologically sort through every moment you can recall from your first encounter to the last separation, feeling your progress and self-discovery during this period, also the genuine joys, sorrows and hurts you felt as you were. This is a very memorable and meaningful experience to yourself, with priceless gold memories for you to revisit over and over again. You feel a little better. Then you are overwhelmed by a new round of sadness, and so on and so forth.
You begin to wonder if this “awakening” is also part of the storm that gives you the illusion of being an outside observer in which you make efforts in vain to deal with the unstoppable emotions. But you soon give up this thought, because the changes you perceive are real, and you are a strong believer in the power of realness.
Occasionally there are some moments that help you take a temporary break from the storm. For instance, a friend comes to talk to you about her problems, which gives you an idea of what it’s like to be a true outside observer. It’s no wonder, then, how one can confront oneself without any subjectivity. Once again, you realize the limitations of your ego. You are sure there is something you can do to make this separation process different, but you are still hesitant, wavering, and finally drowning in the endless sadness.
This is a storm that happens in January. You can count the previous months if you want. In this storm, you rise and fall, feel grieve and rejoice. You know this storm is coming to an end and your life will be calm again. You know you will face whatever is coming next.
You cherish the storm, as well as all the good and bad feelings it has brought you.
You write it all down just for the record. The storm and you in it deserve to be well remembered.