Howl, a Lot
Sometimes, it is hard to get to the outer, inner edges of an emotional response, to decondition the repeated, generalized narrative, to search for the margins of our thinking, feeling, speaking and relating habits. Even more so when an emotional response seems to be connected to an apparently not individual experience, something that may easily be regarded as going beyond the outer edges of our responsivity.
A strange mixture of nausea, distance terror and fervent sadness kept resonating in my bodily cells last week, orchestrating my perception and response to little and bigger daily events. Just going about doing my business, I couldn’t put into words what the unrest was all about. Then, suddenly, after a disagreement with my partner, I burst into tears, and I hear myself shout out: “I can’t stop the battle, I just can’t!!” Surely, these intense emotions were also related to the quarrels with my partner, but the intensity made me aware that 'there' was more to recognize 'here'. What was this all about?
Afterwards, I kept thinking about war, mental imagery demanded attention, narratives of particular people in specific, horrifying situations wanted to be seen and heard in my consciousness. In the meantime, some part of me, some line of thought, kept saying I should not introduce these preoccupations in any conversation, because it might upset people - and what good could it bring? These conditionings felt untrue, of course there can be a time and place to share our worries and grief. And still, often, I couldn’t. As if there were a grief that I couldn’t reach, that I could not trust in its place in shaping who I am, who we are as human beings, also – and that is actually the point.
It was only after really sitting with the emotions, after the co-creation of an open and attentive conversation with my partner, after having experienced a sense of unconditional love towards the vulnerability of being in an intimate relationship, that I recognized how, on a subtle yet steering psychic level, some part of me was seeking the power to have impact and alter situations that I really can’t. Not to say that I just should give into damaging behavior or bluntly accept violence and sink into indifference. This was a deeper acceptance of very unsettling experiences in my personal past, chaotic situations that left me feeling entirely powerless, and thus created a psychological counter-reaction in a (for the time being successful) attempt to survive. However thoughtful I had already looked at these situations, there was still this subtle but demanding feeling of hopelessness prompting resistance to what is, configurating an emotional stance characterized by closed heartedness as an escape out of reality. Embedded in caring connection, the intricate and subtle levels of defense that I recognized in myself gave way to surrender, again. The deep truth is extreme grief, my body’s need to howl, my mind’s need to overcome representation and to give into possibilities emerging from beyond the shaping of reality into one particular path of supposed eternal survival. Howl, Lot, a lot.