How it feels to feel

"I am out here studying stones
Trying to learn to be less alive
Using all of my will
To keep very still
Still even on the inside
I've cut all of the pertinent wires
So my eyes can't make that connection
I am holding my breath
I am feigning my death
When I'm looking in your direction"
-Studying Stones by Ani DiFranco

I am new to this, or so it seems. Not really new, it's just been a long time. When I think back on the preceding years I feel as though I have been walking around half dead for so long. Probably since Riley died. So much of me died that day alongside her. And then I spent so many years afterward lost in the grief of losing her, and of not being able to have another child. I walked around with those things as my only focus, lost in sorrow and frustration. I was disconnected. And then Jonah. My sweet, beautiful little boy... He came along and with the joy he brought, I started to see how much unhappiness existed outside of those things that were so obvious to me.

I knew I would leave. I had known it for a long time. The prospect of staying made me tremble inside. I was unbearably uncomfortable with the idea of it. I did not want to be looked at, talked to, touched. I would day dream about leaving. But then I would wonder if something was wrong with me. Why was I so dead inside? Why couldn't I love my husband? I made so many accusations against myself. I tried so hard to find love, to stick it out, to give my son a family. Until I just couldn't do it anymore. I was scared. Terrified, really. I couldn't imagine a life different than the one I had been leading. But then I jumped.

And now here I am, in a different life. It's just amazing. There is happiness. I can't even fathom how I endured that other life for so long. And here's one of the weirdest sensations... to feel. I feel. I was so numb for so long. I mean, I loved my son, I loved my family. But outside of that things like happy and sad simply didn't exist. I floated around like a ghost. I faked the feelings sometimes. I put on a show. But inside there was nothing except an empty pit. When I think of it, when I remember it, I feel sad. I mean, I feel sympathy for myself, for who I was at that time and the hollow gray that I lived in.

I am feeling things now that I haven't felt in so long. I remember lamenting the way feeling like this made me feel. I listened to the same sad songs trying to connect to them, but there was nothing. Oh and now, wow, it is back. I feel, feel, feel. Like Ryan Adams says, "happy and sad and back again" all the time. I am happy with my new life. Many of the emotions are centered around this boy who makes me feel all giddy and happy, and who makes me feel sad and uncertain. He doesn't do anything. He is steady. But my reactions to him are all over the place. I listen to music constantly, preferring Ani DiFranco above all else right now. I hear him in every song. I sit in the shower for 45 minutes at a time, lost in thought. On Sunday I ended up driving to the mountains, finding a trail and hiking to a stream. Once there I climbed up on a rock and sat there, my emotions shifting like the water below me, listening to my iPod. To feel is both wonderful and terrible at once. I'm confused by these feelings because it's been so long since I've had them. I revel in them one moment, and do all I can to banish them the next. I wallow, wallow, wallow. But this, this is better, even when I am sad, than the nothingness of the past years. I would rather be sad and alive than blank and dead.