What is your Favorite Emotion?

[Thumpalumpacus]

It's a difficult choice. Emotions are amazing. I think many people don't appreciate them. I was raised not be emotional. Silently contented was my parents' emotion of choice for their girls. Crying was often punished, anger was always punished, excessive happiness was frowned upon and also punish if it included any loud noises (like too much laughing, jumping up and down with Eee). For a long time I struggled to express emotions and for a period...when my emotional health hit rock bottom, I couldn't feel emotions at all. I always refer to that time as when I didn't exist. If you've ever felt such a complete lack of emotion...it's kind of awful.

My mother encouraged my expressions, but my dad disdained them -- not just "boys don't cry", but stoicism to a deleterious extent -- so I've always had this struggle in me to express my emotions and at the same time tamp them down. As much angst as this has caused me, in one sense that tension has been beneficial, insofar as it has fueled my creativity. Having Dad frown upon the expression of emotion, I turned them into songs and stories, even as outwardly in everyday life I'm as stoic as Dad was.

I think misery is my favorite I don't actually enjoy feeling it but it brings out my creative side. I do my best writing when I let myself drown in my own darkness. The only bad thing is, it can be hard to pull yourself free if you're not careful.

I get a lot of creative juice out of unhappiness, but for me I've found that writing about it helps to cope with it. You're right, it's easy to dwell in it, but one thing I've found is that when I write about my unhappiness (prose or verse) I'm forced to think about it, analyze it, and that process itself often helps me come to grips with it. Not saying that the creative product is worth attention or merit -- it's sometimes schlock and sometimes pretty good, if I do so allow, but whether or not others like it at all doesn't matter, because in the end I write (songs or stories) for myself. It's a form of therapy.

I got home from work tonight about twenty after eleven. Having heard about Nishi's suicide and thought about it my entire shift at work, and having been touched by his outlook, I immediately picked up my guitar and started playing. It wasn't my best playing, but it's helped me process my feelings about his death.

Therapy.