Let me start with one word: Emotion.

It is the affective state of consciousness where we experience hate, love, fear, joy, or the like. Emotion is the very thing that allows other people to understand us, but most importantly, it allows us to understand ourselves.

When I was in the third grade, we lost our grandpa. He was someone I felt understood by. My dad tells me that when I would act up as a child, my grandpa would just wink at me. I remember that wink. I remember his chair. I remember sitting on his lap. I remember his pipe and his sweet smell of tobacco.

I needed a way to talk to him. I needed a way to share how I felt. I needed to see my grandpa again. I needed to get these emotions down.

When I was young, I struggled to show my emotions the right way. They came out as anger or something else. But in the third grade, all I knew is that I had something to say. I had to find a way to get it all down.

I couldn’t understand why I was feeling so sad. I remember sitting down with my binder filled with pockets and folders storing all my secrets. I slid a pen out of one of them and brought it to my lips.

I bit the nails of my hands still sufficiently padded with baby fat as I looked around my room filled with pink pillows and green lamps. My sister’s bed was empty. I was alone. I was alone with my emotions. In this big house with my big family that loved me so much. I was alone.

In that moment, a river of emotions flooded out of me. My thoughts turned into not just words, but a song. Every tear became a note, and every sentence became a melody. Every feeling was somehow coming out onto this paper in a stream of crowded chords I had never heard before. I could hear the song before it was all down.

So that was it. The first song I have ever written. The first time I used my emotion for something productive. The first time I tried to really understand myself, as well as a third grader, could. I called the song, “My Heart was Beating Faster.”

My heart was beating so fast in those moments after my grandpa passed away. I remember. My heart still beats quickly. My heart jumps at love and it breaks at love, too. My heart leaps at the sight of kindness and softens when I hold the hand of a newborn baby.

Emotions still get the best of me. They probably often will. But I say, let these emotions get the best of us. Let them come out. Let the tears fall and the sadness show. Let the love in.

Let yourself feel.

I feel with writing. I have ever since that day. I can’t count the number of songs I’ve written or the stories I’ve jotted down. But I can tell you that everything I do from now on will be done with emotion. Because when I lose my emotions, I lose myself. So, I sit down and I write. And sometimes when I write, I feel my grandpa winking at me and I know I am understood.