Post
by GlassAlmanac » Sat Jan 17, 2015 9:17 pm
Greetings,
For my entire life before KS I considered myself to be emotionally impervious. Trouble would come my way and I would acknowledge the pain it should have inflicted upon me but I would use sheer logic(flawed logic) to reason away my negative emotions, locking them away, deep beneath my psyche(mostly unconsciously but sometimes with full awareness of what I was doing). My theory was that all my negative emotions(loneliness, sorrow, fear, mostly) we useless to me and I'd be better off not to process them. The representation I use is that my emotions were a vast sea and I was locking my negative ones in a massive oil tanker. But off course I was not better off. As appealing as being like a Vulcan is, we are humans and we need our emotions. ALL of them. The good, the bad, and most certainly the ugly. Without my full range of feelings I setup contradictions within. I was unable to sympathize with friends and family. I was distant and cold, apathetic.
Until a miraculous chain of events lead an emotionally perturbed and ambivalent version of my self to engage in a visual novel. Having already been battered by a series of events that left my mental paradigm on a precarious ledge I started KS in a confused but open manner. A decision that eventually shattered my flawed model of cognition. Three years later and I'm still studying the how and why of what the novel did to me exactly, but inside it felt as if that taker from the metaphor earlier had be rent open and a life time of pent up emotions flooded, poured, inundated...infected? Cascaded!, throughout my being. It was difficult days, the worst on record in fact, trying to cope with all that energy. But I prevailed and am a better person for it. After much introspection and self-analysis I realized what I had been doing to myself for all those years. What I had denied myself.
For with no loneliness I would be withdrawn, not knowing that we need intimate companionship to make us exceptional. With out sorrow in my own heart how could I see it in others and give them the comfort and compassion they need? With never any fear inside myself how would I ever know the most distant limits of my capabilities? When I or anyone closes themselves to parts of their emotions they close themselves to parts of humanity! Without the depths of despair one cannot experience the heights of joy. I say it is thus, just as there can be no light without the dark there can be no delight without grief. For you see the often called "dark" or "bad" emotions are the true counterpoint in the music that is life. It has been said that any life worth living isn't just life filled with easy.
I can't say I'm perfect about repressing my emotions now, but I am leaps and bounds ahead of my old self. I wanted to share my experience and conclusions here to help anyone going through an exceptionally rough time. Although it may seem hopeless, it may seem as if there is no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, you should "suffer well" to know that with the proper help, a good deal of time and the right outlook your perceptual bad experience will make you that much of a better person. For your self, your friends, your family and as a member of society as a whole.
Thank you for your time.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel
