I don’t think I’ve gone a week my whole life without hearing those eight words: “don’t let your emotions get in the way.” I’ve always been the heart on their sleeve type of person; I’ve always invested everything into people, dreams, goals. After years of hearing that I was allowing my emotions dictate my decisions, I began to condition myself to separate them. I began to question myself in everything. A boy would get mad at me and instead of taking the responsibility he bared, it was my fault for getting upset, my emotions not being in check. When things would fall through in groups I was a part of and I would get upset, I was being too uptight. I was allowing things affect me that shouldn’t. When I got a bad test grade, I was overreacting for being upset with myself. I was being told by all these people in my life that my way of feeling, thinking, dealing was wrong, so I changed.
I began to pick apart the way I acted. I began to alter myself, my emotions. I became callous and caught off about situations. I learned the art of not letting people into my world... but then my world became a pretty lonely place. I became pretty lonely. Then I experienced some new things, I added some years to my age. I realized that all those people telling me to change, telling me to suppress the way I felt were wrong. I learned that my emotions were not just reactions they were indications of how I actually felt. I learned that I was not foolish to listen to those indications; I learned it was okay to show them to people that you truly care about. I learned that I was the type of person that wore her heart on her sleeve and that was absolutely okay.
The thing is, everything I do I am emotionally invested in and when things don’t end up the way I wanted them to, it hurts. But then I deal with it. I work harder, I push myself, I realize some things are out of my control, or I move on from something if I need too. They are not something to be afraid of, they are not something to be ashamed of, and they are certainly not something to hide.
