learning to surf

Feelings are much like waves, we can't stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf. ~Jonatan Mårtensson

i find myself at the beginning of a new chapter in my life, i think. i am not quite sure how i catapulted here, yet here i am none-the-less. it has become so glaringly clear that i am really inept when it comes to reading my emotional meter. i have no doubt that this is largely due to the fact that as i was growing up, i turned to getting high as a way to handle any emotional thing that would appear in my life. it was sooo utilitarian and actually worked for many many years. as i got older, and the amounts of drugs and alcohol required to quell the issues raised by my emotional life and the ensuing difficulties and dramas, i would find myself staying higher longer, requiring much larger amounts to stay high, and mortgaging more and more of my sanity in order to not deal with life on life's terms. but i digress.

i am just now learning how to deal with emotions. the insanity of that email about me that was sent around triggered something very core for me. ok- that i can understand. but, my reactions to that were primal and not grown up at all. i really felt attacked, became paranoid and defensive, and started to undo and detach from many things in my life because detaching and withdrawing are behaviors i am very used to. (i hope you can indulge me, here). but, this kind of behavior is not beneficial for me, nor is it helpful to the people in my life who care about me. and this is the very thing i am speaking of here.

emotional sobriety. you know, i have shared my feelings around and my emotional experiences with several friends in "the program" and i have found many of them, who are just as new to sobriety or more than i, become uncomfortable and share sayings about meetings, letting go, etc... i know these things, but i also know that i am not just interested in getting attention here. i am also really interested in learning how to work through my feelings in a healthy way. and somehow, letting go (although completely valid) of something before i really recognize it, seems just another form of denial and not personal emotional growth. i wonder, is one supposed to let go of re-ignited trauma easily without that letting go simply giving permission for it to return again? is it futile to want to experience some feelings without going overboard and become comfortable or adept at doing so?

this is where i whine a little (more). i have done quite a bit of work to feel useful in my life. i no longer want to feel worthless and full of self-hatred. i have managed this with the great help of a sponsor, with the help of a process, and with the guidance of a higher power. i hope i have come to a place where it is completely acceptable for me to have my feelings and experience them. i spent so many years numbing out, and i hope i am not expected to numb them out now but in a different way. i know that this is a slippery slope i am on. but, i also feel that i am in a sort of public profession and have been graced with some success. i believe it completely possible for me to continue to be a target for people. i need to learn instinctively not to personalize this if it happens. it isn't about me as much as it is about who is looking and what they want to see.

i want to continue to give back to my local community here. and i want to do it with grace and dignity, both for myself and for my neighbors. i believe that learning to be at ease with my emotions will help me in my public professional life and in my personal life as well. i need to learn how to be present in a situation, not retreat.

Billy Hamilton, one of the great surfers of the 1960s and step-father of big wave surfer Laird Hamilton said, “To become the energy of the waves, that’s the main idea. You take when the water gives, and you give when the water takes”. In Voice of the Wave (re-printed in The Surfer’s Journal), Tom Blake, one of the founders of modern surfing went further and suggested looking inside the wave itself and further still to the secrets it holds at an atomic level. He said, “Each water molecule…is a model of order, harmony and rhythm; thus the atom becomes the key point of reference…in judging the wave as well as all problems in life.” So it is with looking to our emotions. They are like waves, the steady heartbeat of our soul. They are subtle, complex and not altogether clear, much like the constituent parts of a wave. They are fundamental to our very existence.

exerpted from timkevan

and most importantly, i need to stop over-dramatizing the life situations that appear before me. i definitely have a tendency to react too strongly. my sponsor says often, it's not our reactions to life that give us trouble, it's our over-reactions.