We are taught to think of emotions as linear, but they are actually circular. They have natural expiration dates and surprising transformations.
Crying ends with laughter
Laughter ends with tears
Anger ends in silence
Fear ends in void
Sadness ends in apathy
Jealousy ends with admiration
Ego ends with humility
All these human emotions are felt every day by all of us. Just like a baby expressing all these in sleep, we grown-ups also have to deal with all of it every day. The difference is we learn to not express our feelings as quickly as we feel them. Some of us even master it to manipulate others, and some suppress it. Life and the people around us teach us what we should or should not do—and this is what society calls "Emotional Intelligence."
The Survival of the Numb
Emotional intelligence doesn't mean you do not feel the emotion; it means you know how to handle it. Companies and HR departments test individuals on this, and we all learn to cope. Some find healthy ways to manage the weight, while others apply "bad" coping techniques just to handle the sheer intensity of hard emotions.
If I look back at my own 300-page book of experiences, my pick would be Fear.
Fear has come to me in many forms. The first was the fear of being ridiculed by fellow classmates. Later, it appeared again when I got married—stepping into a life with a person I didn't truly know. I guess it was my fear that made me so numb that I could not even hear what I was feeling.
Looking at my reality from the outside, I should have cried oceans, but I didn't shed a single tear. Whether it was a good or bad coping technique, I don't know—but I coped. I survived.
I still use this same technique today when the fear feels like too much. Somehow, the fear vanishes, replacing itself with a strange Void that I cannot express in words.
When I enter this state, I don't even feel like praying or asking for help. My inner self simply "auto-tunes" to this strange frequency where I feel nothing. It is a silent, hollow safety. I am still there, moving and acting, but the part of me that can be hurt has gone elsewhere.
We are all carrying libraries of these unspoken moments. We handle our pains in solitude because we don't want to attract sympathy or be misunderstood. We endure "small things" that are actually big enough to blow our minds, yet we stay silent.
How do you cope with your emotions when the volume gets too loud? Do you find a way to express them, or does your system, like mine, eventually autotune to the quiet of the Void?
Maybe the goal isn't to judge our coping mechanisms, but to recognize that we are doing whatever it takes to keep writing our next page.
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