Big Emotions, Pt. 3: Sorrow

Sorrow sits at the bottom of the deep river of all unplumbed emotions.  Grief, despair, hopelessness, anger, shame, hurt...They are all mixed up in sorrow and get dredged up to cloud the water and alter the current's flow.  This river has a power of its own, moving at will along the path it carves.

Many times, when I lie down to sleep, when I just start to drift, I see a very real flood behind my eyelids, sweeping me along with it, sometimes confined within riverbanks, sometimes spreading rapidly across the landscape of life. I have no control whatsoever over my vessel, swept along without any way to stop it or slow it, completely vulnerable to the whims of the water beneath me. 

Sorrow, I know.  

Why do I sorrow?  For the same reasons we all do.  I can be going along happily, and then something will suddenly plunge me down, down, down into the depths, touch sorrow's surface and there I am fighting my way along the wild roiling waters of emotion. It can be one thing or a combination of things. Fear of being too old.  Knowledge that no matter how time may appear to be dragging, it's really speeding ahead, not slowed at all by any event large or small.  Watching loved ones' struggles.  Overwhelm with too much of everything.  Being tired. Or a month, such as March, in which revelation has once more dredged up long-forgotten memories.  Anger. Shame.  Guilt.  The memory of a dream I once held dear and know now shall never ever come to pass...

But sorrow is never a permanent state.  It's not depression.  It is an emotional response to too much.  

This month, I've dealt with big emotions.  I don't recall exactly what set them in motion, but I can tell you that I felt I would surely drown until the moment I stopped fighting it and gave in to the desire to cry it out.  Not one storm of tears followed but several.  

Tears are restorative.  Literally, I mean.  They restore homeostasis which affects our ph balance, our emotional balance, our organic functions.  

Tears are letting go.   

I am weary at this moment.  Weary of myself and this roller coaster I've been on.  I'm behind with the things I'd promised myself I'd do for me this month.  I have tried, truly I have tried, to be aware of what it is I need and see that I give it to me.  I have slept poorly until one recent night I found myself sleeping as though drugged.  I fought my way up to the day through the thick surface of sleep.  I was no longer exhausted.  I no longer felt wrung out.  Whatever flood of emotion I'd been in, it was over.  

I know that over the past six to eight months, I have been intense in seeking out who I am, what makes me what I am, and identifying what I need to be in order to live well.    I have accepted that this journey of discovery is likely not over, that there will be other times of deep excavation that leads to much revelation.  

Let them come.  Let them come and then let sorrow flood over me and strip me clean once more.  One teardrop at a time.