Feel all the Feels

The past few days I have been miserable.  Feeling miserable, behaving miserably to the people around me (in spite of being abundantly aware of my miserable self).

Pissy.  Short tempered.  Impatient.

Not a whole lot of fun for anyone in my world, me included.

So, like anyone, I've been trying to figure out WHY my mood is so effing gross.
  Nothing in my world has changed overtly.  The full moon isn't for a couple of days yet.  My hormones shouldn't be rollercoaster-ing at this point (as much as I can keep track of that these days - peri-meno-what-the-hell???).

I wasn't making any progress with the actively-thinking thing (other than frustrating myself just a leetle bit more), so I decided to just sit quietly for a couple of stolen, quiet minutes this afternoon and just let myself "feel all the feels" (to quote my wise 16 year old daughter).

Wow.....

When I gave myself permission, guess what I figured out?

The feels that I thought I was feeling?  Angst? Anger, even? Frustration?

Those feels weren't the real feels.

I was sad.  Not need-to-cry sad.  Not hurt feelings sad, or "oh poor me" sad, or even the world is a miserable place sad.

A simple, gentle sad.  One that makes perfectly good sense when I look at some of the things going on in my world.

Ah, sweet clarity!

On the tail of that realization came the understanding of why I was feeling all of the over-the-top, quasi-aggressive feels that were making me so crazy.

I'm kinda tired of feeling sad.  I, quite honestly, have had enough sad for a good long while.

I don't WANT to FEEL SAD.

So, as unpleasant as it is, rather than feeling the sadness, my psyche (for lack of anything better to blame) decided to have me feel all the frustration, and anger, and helplessness that goes with having to face something that I really, REALLY don't want to do (real mature, huh?  I guess at some level my psyche is still 6....whatever!).

As soon as I allowed myself to feel the feel that I was actually FEELING, all the other stuff fell away.

And this sadness?  It's okay.  It really is.  Sadness isn't only for when things are falling apart, or ending, or hopeless.

Sometimes you just have to feel all the feels.