The Emotion You Won’t Feel Runs Your Life

I think we all have one. The one we joke about or rationalize or package up in intellectual language so we don’t have to actually sit with it. The one we deny, bury, talk circles around. Maybe you don’t even know what yours is yet. Maybe you think you’re fine. Maybe you’ve built a whole identity around being fine. But somewhere underneath all that coping and competence is the feeling you swore you’d never touch again.

And it’s running your life.

Maybe it’s shame. That quiet hum underneath everything you do. That voice that tells you you’re a burden if you ask for too much, that love must be earned, that you are always one step away from being too much or not enough. So you hustle. You shrink. You shapeshift. You stay in relationships that feel like begging and call it compromise. You say “no worries” with a smile when really it hurt like hell.

Or maybe it’s grief. The kind that’s still stuck in your throat because no one ever gave you space to feel it. Because people moved on. Because you moved on. But your body didn’t. And now you cry over stupid things you can’t explain. Now you get irrationally angry when someone leaves the room, when someone cancels, when someone doesn’t text back, because the people you loved before never really said goodbye. And you never really let yourself fall apart.

Maybe it’s rage. Not anger. Rage. That deep, molten thing you swallowed so young, you forgot it was even there. The one that comes out sideways, sarcasm, withdrawal, self-sabotage. The one you were taught was dangerous. That you learned to fear in your parents, or your partners, or yourself. And now you avoid conflict like it might kill you. Now you say “it’s not worth it” when what you mean is I’m afraid of what I might feel if I let myself speak.

Whatever it is, whatever you’ve been running from, it didn’t disappear. It got quiet. It learned to whisper. It waits in the background of your decisions, your reactions, your patterns. It’s the tension in your jaw. The silence after the fight. The reason you can’t sleep. The reason you can’t stay.

And the only way through it… is through it. Not around. Not over. Not past. Through.

Which means letting it surface. Letting it be ugly. Letting it interrupt your story of being put together. Letting it make you inconvenient, unpredictable, cracked open in a way that doesn’t resolve neatly. Letting it fuck up the image you’ve built and the pace you’ve set and the comfort of not feeling too much.

Because the emotion you won’t feel will keep running the show until you finally turn and face it. Until you let it scream. Until you ask it what it wants instead of stuffing it down again and calling it strength.

You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to forgive anyone yet. You don’t have to find meaning in it today.

You just have to feel it. Fully. Honestly. Without skipping ahead. Because that’s where the real power is.

Not in pretending it doesn’t hurt. But in finally admitting that it still does.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post. If you'd like to explore it more deeply, read more in this series of thoughts.