I leave for training camp for the world race in eight hours. eight hours. and I think I’m excited but everything feels flat. things are happening. I am floating through. nothing feels REAL anymore the way it used to. (and by nothing I actually mean nothing. my interactions with people seem inconsequential and meaningless. my interactions with solid objects make me hyper-aware of the “fact” that what I perceive to be solid is actually a whole lot of vacuum and only a little bit mass. protons, neutrons, electrons, energy, what. even my interactions with things that usually make me feel something, like music, seem flat, baseline, dry. and yes, this includes God too.)
now I KNOW that life is not all about emotions and faith is not all about emotions and people are not all about emotions. (although sometimes what seems to make us human, what makes us relatable people, is that we have emotions. but if that defines humanity, does that mean I’m not human? not a relatable person?) all these Christians seem to look down on emotions. but it’s so hard for me to function without emotions and excitement. you could maybe say that I am somewhat driven by emotions, at least to a certain level. I don’t think of myself as an emotional person, but excitable, yes.
to a certain extent I think you could put my emotions on three levels. the first is the one that everyone sees. excitement, laughing. or seriousness, quietness, tiredness, confusion, apathy, whatever. next is the one I share with people that are closer to me. they’re a little deeper, and that’s where things feel more real. and last is the one that I don’t experience a whole lot. those are usually just me and a journal and God and occasionally whoever is there for an outburst. those are even more real, scarily real. i don’t like them. I also don’t experience them a lot. like hardly ever. and when I do I want them to go away. this is why I don’t think of myself as particularly emotional, because to me “emotional” belongs in that third category. frighteningly real, raw emotions. they scare me.
anyways. I usually thrive on that second level. not having anyone to share that second level with scares me. I think I repress or suppress or whatever that second level of emotions unless I have someone to share it with and that repression or suppression or whatever leads to some flatness and some not feeling real. which is why I’m not really sure if I’m an introvert after all or just a shy extrovert (which really sucks btw). I need those close people… but recently, I haven’t even been experiencing the first let alone the second (and not the third either but that’s okay). that also scares me. maybe it’s part of who I identify myself to be. that first level of emotions – the energy, being excited, laughing a lot, being contentedly joyful (although honestly without a whole lot of depth). so this flatness is… confusing. who am I without this?
I know I’m supposed to find my identity in Christ. I know this. but I don’t entirely know what it means. I also know that I’m supposed to ground my faith in the truth – The Truth – rather than in emotions. but I’ve built up my faith in the truth or The Truth or whatever over the last four years with support in those second and third emotional levels. and it’s come to be that things don’t feel real without those second and third levels. I can even make do with just the first. I’ve done it before. but now what?
if things don’t feel real, how are they supposed to BE real?
here’s to hoping and praying that training camp will bring some of this real-ness to me, whether it’s through these emotions that I’ve just put in three boxes even though I don’t like boxes, or whether it isn’t and God somehow convinces me of The Truth without those emotions. because I’m not supposed to need emotions, only The Truth, but I don’t know how to separate the two. I want this whole faith thing – I NEED this whole faith thing – to be real again.
