Embrace the sad. That’s what my therapist told me today. Embrace the sad.

I’m sorry to say that, even after over seven years of therapy and an incredible amount of progress, I still had to ask if that was allowed. It sounded like jest…but it really wasn’t. When you are born and raised in an environment where there is no space allotted for what you want and need and feel, self-validation is a really hard concept to learn. I’ve gotten a little better over time but still really struggle with it. Even when my therapist asked me about whether I had liked something as a child, I answered the question not with details about myself but rather with details of whether my mother liked it. I didn’t even realize I had done that until she exclaimed that she wished she could have recorded that whole exchange. It took several minutes for me to realize what I’d said and what the implications were. It’s become apparent that I can barely remember things about myself when I was young because other people’s needs almost exclusively eclipsed mine. It’s easier to recall my brother’s favorite things than my own.

These days, outside of the scope of my trauma recovery, I am endlessly grateful to report that overall my life is pretty good. It’s relatively stable and pleasant. What ends up happening when you find the stability you’ve always longed for, is that the instability of your past creeps right up, so you cannot help but notice what stark contrast there is between the two halves of your life experience. That will inevitably bring up all kinds of feelings about all kinds of experiences, good, bad, and indifferent. You find yourself feeling sad about happy things because you realize that’s how things could have been all along, but you know that’s not how they were before. Various things that by themselves might make you feel a little sad attach themselves to both each other and to other, bigger sad feelings, so that you end up with a large indistinct ball of sad which you can’t even begin to explain very well, so you just carry it around with you and try to appear fine on the outside. Even then, you worry that people can see that ball of sad, in spite of the facade you so carefully construct.

(Am I gaining weight? Am I pregnant? No, no, it’s just my big ball of sad. Don’t mind me.)

I am doing my best to keep compartmentalizing and stay functional and all that jazz. But rather than encourage my compartmentalization, which she doesn’t really need to do, my therapist encouraged me to, as much as I can do so, embrace the sad.

I’m allowed to have feelings. I am allowed to be sad about any number of things, one at a time or all at once. I’m allowed to take up that space for myself.

To that end, in case any of you need to hear it too, for whatever reason, I say unto you:

You’re allowed to have feelings. You are allowed to be sad about any number of things, one at a time or all at once. You’re allowed to take up that space for yourself.

Embrace it. If you do…if I do…surely the big ball will deflate over time.