Dawning reality as the year winds down, maybe I’m not as in touch with myself as I think I am.

Harsh awakening. Sorta. Not really harsh maybe, but a personal wake-up call for sure.

A therapist I saw earlier this year, he observed I talk about my feelings, but maybe I don’t feel them so much. Or express them fully. Hmm.

Talking to a few old friends just the other day, they observed some of that about me too. Or at least that I spin things to the positive, finding the silver lining. “Well, yeah…” I think, “that’s maybe the hallmark piece of me.”

Hearing my friends share their observations, it spurs me to consider my hallmark, my basic life strategy anew.

Quite a revelation, I must say. Also, it’s an invitation. It’s an invitation to consider how I feel, how I go about feeling, and if I’m actually living in deep denial.

But then I think, I’m not sure what I’m denying. I feel deeply a lot of the time; I feel so much I think, it freezes me, most days; I start most days that way.

I feel deeply, the uncertainty, the doubt, awash in worry. I have to push through those feelings to the other side, to function, to cope.

I believe happiness, like love, is a choice. And my feelings are the medium, continuum through which I live out each day, they are the foundation that I respond to each hour, each day.

All that said, maybe this sounds like some sort of defense of me I put up; not meant to defend, but explain, and reflect on how I am and why, out loud.

Yep. quite an invitation before me, quite a revelation: to peel back more, more to the core, core of me, inside, feeling, what am I feeling?

Not sure, exactly. But it’s something like relief I’ve come this far; and who I am, and how I am, and how much better I can still become.