For someone who’s endured a metric fuckton of pain, both physical and psychological, you’d think the potential of it wouldn’t scare me. But it has been, lately.

I consider myself a compartmentalization queen, as I’ve detailed before. Some of my compartments are shut tighter than others, but in general, it’s a hallmark of my executive functioning. I’m so used to that constant control, that the idea of letting go, of allowing the compartment panels to flap down and allow the inner contents to flow out…it’s terrifying. What if it drowns me? What if I get so lost in that pain that I can never find my way out or put it back away again? What if it never stops? That kind of worry reminds me of why I don’t feel comfortable going to the cemetery to visit loved ones’ gravesites (outside of the funerals themselves). I know that for a lot of people, this is an important and helpful process and experience, and I respect that. I just wonder, if I went, how I would ever bring myself to leave, because I would feel swallowed up by the depth and stark reality of that loss, and it would immobilize me. I don’t want to be immobilized.

I’ve never been in a position where I’ve been allowed to feel things to such a full extent that it can consume me at the expense of other responsibilities, either logistical or emotional. I have always had to tamp it back down sooner or later (usually sooner). I mean, if I had a dollar for the number of times I was snarled at to stop crying as a child…

The truth is, though, there is a need from time to time to truly let yourself emote, freely. I say all the time that it is necessary to have your feelings, then do your job. But sometimes, your job is actually to have your feelings. While it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the idea of this huge amount of pain or sadness or trauma is going to be unleashed, that it feels so gigantic as to be insurmountable and unending, the truth of the matter is that your body only has a finite amount of energy to expend on the act of processing emotions. It is understandable to feel anxious that if I let myself start crying I’ll never stop, but, the body really doesn’t work that way. Eventually, after a while — maybe a long while — the emotional purge comes to an end. The only thing to do is to let yourself get through it until it’s done.

Sounds silly, but, to put too fine a point on it, how do you deal with big scary feelings? You feel them. Imagine that.

I’ll be working on this process, and part of it involves figuring out when exactly I should start. Obviously I need to feel ready, but a bigger piece of the puzzle is that I need to recognize when I truly have the proper emotional bandwidth to spare for such an arduous and intense psychological exercise. It sounds lame to say I need to fit feelings into my busy schedule, but it’s more a matter of recognizing when I can best devote the proper time and energy for it. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m working on the consideration of it all. I suppose we can call it taking baby steps.

Baby steps are better than no steps at all. Frankly, it’s a marathon, not a sprint; it’s a test not of my strength, but of my endurance. And G-d knows, if I know how to do anything, it’s how to endure.