Emotional Nomad

I feel rather in unsettled in that I rarely have felt familiar from day to day with how I feel at that particular moment...it always seemed new, strange or odd. I don't really have a normal way i feel anymore at this point in time and so I can only come to the conclusion that after 5.5 years of sobriety, if you don't have a normal, "base-line" by now...well that must mean that your normal IS being in a state of fluctuation most or all of the time.  Call me the Emotional Nomad!  


I can live with that I suppose...I mean, what else am I going to do, huh? I cannot really change the natural way I feel unless i do it "un-naturally and there is NO FREAKING way                                                                                                                                                                                                                But truly I do feel the healthier way to "be" is to feel the way you just naturally feel when you feel it. I know..DUH, right?! But you would be surprised...nay SHOCKED even...how many people find it completely unacceptable to just feel the way they feel. almost nobody in our society does really...think about that a minute.


Most Americans drink coffee...right? Well caffeine is a drug and it drastically challenges the way a person feels...so right there the majority of us are already altering the way we feel. I'm not giving up coffee...I really enjoy  the many routines I have established around drinking coffee throughout the day in addition to the fact that it indeed helps to keep me awake and alert. 


I think that in the past so much of my moods and emotions were tied to the drinking and drug taking I was doing. So my emotional state was tied directly to a source...an artificial source right outside of myself. Today i feel what I feel. Sure...outside influences are always going to be a part of life but somehow this just feels more realized, normal and natural. 


But once my emotional and psychological state got to the point where I was bottoming out and contemplating taking my own life...I was trapped in a vicious circle of self hatred and self loathing. There was NO WAY OUT. Or so I thought....


Looking back on all that now, I definitely remember feeling burdened, frightened and threatened by my emotions...hence my life long attempt at controlling how I felt by suppressing those feelings with drink and drug. This became even more important after I was raped and I started to have some incredibly drastic mood changes, nightmares, flashbacks and an obvious increase in my emotional instability. I know now this was due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, 


I just drank and used more and more drugs to try and tone all that emotional crap down and keep it together....it never truly worked though and eventually the tools of "control" I used...the booze and the drugs themselves took control of me because I'd become addicted to them. And once that happened everything got dangerously dark and out of control.


Today I accept my emotions for what they are and make no real attempt to control them . No if anything I make more of an effort almost naturally to embrace me emotions and life has followed along quite nicely. They (emotions) are what they are and come and go as they are required. Sure I can lose touch with them or feel something too emotionally but there just doesn't seem to be the trauma or the drama attached to them anymore. 


And nobody is happier about that then I....


(Painting: Henri Mattise)