Be nice! Be happy! Be productive! Don’t sit around being lazy, don’t be angry, let go of those feelings. They are not useful or good for you! This is often the common mantra within the daily routine videos and the aesthetic routines of influencers that often make me look around and think, “what the hell am I doing with my life?” It is hard to remember that these videos are highly glamourized and edited versions of people when you are watching them while laying on your bed eating a bag of sour cream and onion chips.
The first time I realized how I kept shutting down my negative feelings and disconnecting from them was when I read The Strength in Our Scars by Bianca Sparacino. This collection of poems is a gripping look into the realities of heartbreak, loneliness, and being resilient in the face of it all. Within these pages, I learned about finding strength in spite of the pain life deals you, and always getting back up. A poem that struck a particular chord with me can be seen above. I also want to highlight a specific line: “do not reach into yourself and pull out what life has planted within you.” This line reminds me of planting a seed: how you have to put in time and effort to help it grow, until one day it blooms and gives you beauty, veggies, or animal visitors. I love Sparacino’s use of the term “plant” because it remarks upon how, if you don’t put in the time and effort to nurture both your positive and negative ones feelings and emotions, they will fade and leave you numb to the world. That plant that was once nourished will die and be uprooted.
Another recent read for me is Untamed by Glenn Doyle. In this book, she considers the concept of “easy” buttons, stating:
Easy’ buttons are the things that appear in front of us that we want to reach for because they temporarily take us out of our pain and stress. They do not work in the long run, because what they actually do is help us abandon ourselves. ‘Easy’ buttons take us to fake heaven. Fake heaven always turns out to be hell. You know you’ve hit an ‘easy’ button when, afterward, you feel more lost in the woods than you did before you hit it.
When I read this section of the book, I had to close it and come to terms with the easy buttons that I used in my life to avoid memories, people and feelings. The truth of Doyle’s statement is that no one wants to deal with the hard, messy, feelings that life always presents, and often we distract, deflect, or don’t acknowledge these feelings and emotions. Sometimes, it’s okay to distract yourself. But, when you keep repressing your feelings instead of dealing with them, it all gets bottled up and eventually explodes, leaving you even more lost than you were before.
So, you. Yeah, you, reading this article wondering why you should care? Look at your own life. What are the easy buttons that you keep pushing to avoid negative feelings, emotions, and situations? Maybe it’s time to rip those buttons out and water that plant.