The Feeling of Feeling

Have you ever noticed that missing something or someone can feel different depending on the thing or the person?

Sometimes you miss things you've never experienced. People you've never met. And that feels like a quick, sharp pain, almost like a powerful inhalation of ice cold air after a long, heavy run. It creeps up on you at the most unexpected times. A burst of excruciating white-hot pain, and then it's gone. Those moments prick you like knives, because you don't know what it is you're missing, and therefore it's a temporary pain. You can't dwell on it, and pretty soon, it's over before you know it. You don't know what you're missing so how can it possibly hurt you for very long? It can't.

It's when you miss somebody you know or something you've experienced that the dull ache begins to set in. It's there all the time, a tiny, uncomfortable prod at the back of your mind, like a scratchy piece of wool rubbing you the wrong way. Not enough to hurt, but enough to put you in constant discomfort, until you experience a really amazing moment, a memory in the making, and then that uncomfortable prod turns into a throbbing, pulsing, dull ache. You know you'll see that person again, but all you want is them standing right next to you at that moment, regardless of when you know you'll see them again. Knowing isn't enough. You want to feel them there, so close you could touch them.

These moments are hard. Missing your best friend who lives in another state is hard. Missing your sister and brother-in-law and niece who live across the country is hard. Missing the ocean waves outside your window. Missing the smell of freshly washed earth on a summer morning after a late night summer rain. Missing the way the light hit the trees from your vantage point, lying down on the trampoline, looking upwards. Missing your grandmother who lives across worlds, across skies and heavens above you is hard.
Missing the way you used to feel about someone is the hardest thing to miss, though.

You wish you could relive every moment of love, and laughter, and happiness over and over again until all those emotions sink through and rekindle themselves once more in your heart. You wish spending time with them made you feel the way it used to. Like nothing bad could ever happen, and you were the luckiest person in the world, instead of missing yourself when you're around them, and wishing you were different, wishing they were different.

I wish I could relive last summer every new day that goes by.

I wish I could feel the same love, the same excitement, the same satisfaction.

I miss the way I felt last summer. I miss the contentment, the joy, the camaraderie, the closeness I still had with a lot of people.

But underneath it all, I'm comfortable with this new summer because I'm comfortable with myself moreso than I was last summer.

And although it hurts realising that I've lost things I'm never going to get back, and that I'm beginning to lose things I never even thought I'd let go of, I'm okay. I wish it wasn't happening this way, but it is. I can't stop it, so I might as well embrace it.

God gives you things, and people, in life to help you get through a rough time. Sometimes, He gives you things to get you through a time in your life that you didn't even know was rough until you look back on it a year after it happened. Sometimes the things He gives you are completely unexpected, and the only way you can really know that it was sent as a comfort to you is to recognize how you feel about that one thing.
And if you find yourself missing the way you felt about it a year later, you realize that no matter how hard you try, you're not going to feel the same as you did then about it, because you're not going through the same things now that you were.

I miss the way I used to feel about McFly songs. Like I was safe, high in the sky and nobody could ever touch me.
That's an amazing feeling and no matter how hard I try, I can't make myself feel like that again about them. And I've only just realized that I can't do it because I'm not going through the same life changes I was then, and I'm not going through that rough time anymore. God gave those songs to me to get me through an extremely shaky and emotional three years of my life..... But those three years are over, and so is the need to rely on those gifts.
I simply can't feel that way anymore.
I miss it. But I can't do anything about it.

And sometimes, this happens with people too.
It's not that you grow apart from a friend, it's just that you realize that friend was sent to you in a time of need, and while you still love them unconditionally and are invariably close, you realize you don't need them anymore. And you wish you did. You miss that reliance, that dependence, that feeling like you were never alone because of what the two or three or four of you had been through. You wish you could call all those emotions up again, but you just can't.

And that's hard, because subconsciously, you guilt yourself into feeling like this means you don't love them anymore.
Which isn't true.
But when you realize you don't need someone as much as you used to, you automatically start to withdraw a little bit. It's only the truth, but it's hard for the other person sometimes. Sometimes you have to realize you're headed in two different directions, and a little bit of detachment is only necessary to adjust to the future. Sometimes you have to realize your interests aren't exactly in line anymore, you don't believe the same truths. Sometimes you have to realize that you're going to leave someday, leave all of this behind, and they're going to go on living life without you, growing closer to each other while you're gone, and you're going to miss a lot of jokes and laughter and hard times and happy times, and a little bit of conscious withdrawal and detachment is healthy and necessary to get through all of those things, because you know it's going to hurt a lot.

And sometimes you have to reconcile yourself to the fact that you shouldn't feel guilty for feeling this way. It's only natural. It's only love. It's just shining in a different light.

And these are the thoughts that have been plaguing me a lot the past couple of weeks.
And as I celebrated Independence Day tonight with good friends and family, I began to feel that dull ache creeping in, because I was starting to miss the way things used to be. I missed the things I couldn't get back, and the feelings I couldn't bring myself to experience again. It's all a part of growing up, changing, molding, shaping into yourself.

It feels like an exaggerated sort of detachment, a sort of numbness, if you will, but its only temporary.
Soon enough, I'll find a place where I really feel like I belong, instead of feeling like I'm in search of that place.

And so I leave you tonight with a song that's been on my mind all week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZiW_9TDrnM



"Lately I feel like I'm fooling myself, either that or I'm fooling everyone else. And lately I feel like a piece of myself is hanging around for everyone to hold. Lately it's hard to let it all go, but it's going, going, gone right out my door."




Sending you all the love and chocolate chips in the world,

Hannah

Xx