I’ve been taking care of myself well, life has been good, I feel happy, and content.
And yet I still feel like crying a little.
I feel like being alone, in my room, away from everyone.
It’s been this way all my life. Up and down, high and low, feeling a lot. For no particular reason. Crying, even when life is good, even when there’s nothing to cry about. Every day is different. Wake up and I’m in a mood - any shade of blue (sad) or red (mad) or yellow (glad), upon a spectrum of everything. I’m sliding around this scale constantly, sometimes sloppily. Sadly, I still meet shame along the way.
Somewhere along the straggly entry point of encountering human design, in a podcast episode, or maybe from the drips and drabs I found on Instagram, I heard the message:
Emotional definition means living with an emotional wave. Not made to make spontaneous decisions. Needs to take their time. Needs to wait for clarity. Carries emotional depth like the deepest oceans. Moods that everyone can notice. Ecstatic highs and depressive lows, but, crucially, made that way. Emotions are the gift, the depth, the substance of art, the essence of connection. There never needs to be a reason. Stop looking for one.
It’s 4 years later and I’m still looking for reasons.
I’ve been drinking 1 coffee every day. I’m coming into my luteal phase. My sister is visiting. Things are changing. It’s the start of the year (that comes with its own anxieties). I’m back to checking instagram a few times a day….
I stop myself.
What if, at long last, I don’t look for reasons?
This low feels like the tipping point. Into a life of not looking for where I went wrong.
The noticing of the factors is not the thing to cease, but the energy behind it, the way I feel about myself when they come to mind. That need to change something because of my clutching onto ‘I need to make a change so I can escape this low right now / I’m only good to be around when I’m happy / If I’m not happy, I’ve failed somewhere / I need to go back and find where I went wrong / Find something to fix / So I can never, be back here, again.’
Human design got me here. It could have happened another way. I’m sure it does, for many others. But how could I not see this awareness as such a gift? How could I not share this knowledge with others?
I think about all the people out there who go their whole life pushing away their emotions. Shoving it down, soldiering on. The men ‘manning up’, women feeling like too much. Constantly and endlessly being consumed by the wave, trying to escape. Finding addiction, or wrapping themselves up in shame. Drowning in emotion because they never learned how to swim or even that the water is beautiful. Never learned that they possess the whole spectrum of human feeling and that that makes you powerful, not weak.
When I reflect on my relationship to being emotional, I can’t help notice the changes since I began this experiment. I notice the gradual peace and acceptance I’ve been gathering for myself. The slow release of all that clutching. Breathing deep when I’m sad. Writing when it gets bad. Taking time for myself. Reaching out when I need it. The lows are the place where I write words like this. The place I pull from.
I have a lot of life stretching out in front of me. I do not wish to spend it wishing I was different, always trying to find something to fix. Human design tells me that being emotional is innate. I must come to terms with it. Notice what I’m feeling. Sink into it. Breathe. Get to know myself in the newfound depth and make art from what I find there.
I wish to live my life as a person who embraces how I am. Who doesn’t fight against myself. I wish to be with myself in a way that I sway with the tide, never again swim against it.
I write this message for people like me whose whole world is coloured by feelings, and maybe they don’t even know it. Whether you know your chart or not, emotionally defined or not, let this be an encouragement for you, to embrace your spectrum of everything. The up, the down, back, and forth, round and round. Every direction.
May we own our every emotional direction.
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😭💫<3
Sinead 😭😭😭 #1: I’m so happy you’re writing again. #2: As someone with emotional authority and a whole bunch of emotional channels, I felt (ha!) this one sooooo deeply. “Constantly and endlessly being consumed by the wave, trying to escape.” 🌊 Oh yes, that was absolutely my life growing up — learning to embrace all my Water (in an astrological lens) has been a godsend. Thank you for inspiring all of us to do the same.