For a very, very long time, I believed that feelings had to be repressed.
Feelings were not for me. Emotions were for ugly people, as Willam Belli once said. If I’m being truly honest, I thought that they were synonymous with weakness; I thought that a feeling was a crack in a foundation and too many of them would result in my ultimate downfall. I was terrified that if someone knew I cared about them, or that I was in pain, or that something made me happy, those were things that could then be turned against me in some way. I was the master of burying my feelings. Push it all the way down and bury it so deep that no one can touch it, no one can see it, no one can identify the cracks.
I am trying to forgive myself for the cracks. I am trying to remember that if there is strength in being able to move on from your breaks, there is also some strength in allowing yourself to break in the first place.
At the same time, I am trying to be more open. Because the cracks, I think, are important. I am trying to soften myself. I am trying to be gentler and say what I mean and tell people the things that I feel. I used to think that by being stoic and this immovable force I would be the strongest, most untouchable, invincible version of myself. But more and more I am learning there is a lot of bravery in being open. In saying, “That hurts me,” or, “I love this,” or, “I need this.” That level of vulnerability takes a lot boldness, a lot of bravery. And that different kind of strength is something I admire a lot and am training myself to be okay with.