Holding Joy
Aug. 8th, 2022 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI've come up with a lot of ways to handle being upset. I write, I talk it out, I distract, I sit and feel it, I dance it out, I connect with new things, I connect with old things, I connect with my garden, I find patterns, all sorts of strategies depending on what's going on.
I do not have great strategies for what to do when I'm happy. I usually have a strong impulse to share joy or to make a plan to hold it. What I don't know how to do is sit with the intensity of it. I also don't know how to share it. I don't do joyful projects with other people in part because I don't do projects with other people (Josh excepted) but if I did I wouldn't know-- if you share the experience of making something, how do you then share the experience of pride and happiness and future-anticipation and whatever with someone? Do you just sit around and assume they feel the same? Josh will sometimes (years later even) comment on how happy he is with the pigshed we made and I'm happy with it existing as a memory of time we spent together doing the project, thinking together and working together, but I don't know how to share that with him.
When I'm happy with someone, say we're sitting in the car singing together or lying next to each other being close or sitting around a fire toasting meat or far away not talking and they do something that makes me feel like the world is perfect and wonderful and the moment rings like good crystal, I'm not sure how to share that. I know how to do things to make people feel loved, to learn their love languages and give them those things, but that's about creating a feeling in them and not in sharing a feeling when I have it. And love is different than happiness anyhow, for most people it implies a set of prescribed actions and thoughts and I'm just talking about happiness, about joy.
And when I'm planting the seeds of tomatoes or peppers I've crossed and they come up and I've created something in partnership with these plants, my mind and the world together, I can turn the energy into plotting out the next steps in the breeding process to distract but I don't know how to just sit and hold that feeling without it being so intense and overwhelming. Same as people, really.
I can deflect, distract, pour that energy into trying to drive towards a future with more of the same but I can't, I don't know, inhabit it.
When I'm upset the world comes apart, but when I'm happy the world also comes apart. When I'm upset I can talk through it and get support but when I'm happy? I go into myself, where I'm alone. Maybe I can write and hope someone finds and relates to that message in a bottle flung into the internet. But how do I share that experience? Or, how do I share myself, when I'm happy? How do I remain close?
Sometimes I just cry, and am held, and maybe that's the closest I've got so far.
Sometimes I play, like a dog with zoomies will frolic, but my play is weird and usually focused on wordplay and absurdities and few people can meet me in that space.
Anyhow, I don't know how to do this and it's probably part of why joy tends to come with an edge, I guess the edge of isolation and loneliness.
I do not have great strategies for what to do when I'm happy. I usually have a strong impulse to share joy or to make a plan to hold it. What I don't know how to do is sit with the intensity of it. I also don't know how to share it. I don't do joyful projects with other people in part because I don't do projects with other people (Josh excepted) but if I did I wouldn't know-- if you share the experience of making something, how do you then share the experience of pride and happiness and future-anticipation and whatever with someone? Do you just sit around and assume they feel the same? Josh will sometimes (years later even) comment on how happy he is with the pigshed we made and I'm happy with it existing as a memory of time we spent together doing the project, thinking together and working together, but I don't know how to share that with him.
When I'm happy with someone, say we're sitting in the car singing together or lying next to each other being close or sitting around a fire toasting meat or far away not talking and they do something that makes me feel like the world is perfect and wonderful and the moment rings like good crystal, I'm not sure how to share that. I know how to do things to make people feel loved, to learn their love languages and give them those things, but that's about creating a feeling in them and not in sharing a feeling when I have it. And love is different than happiness anyhow, for most people it implies a set of prescribed actions and thoughts and I'm just talking about happiness, about joy.
And when I'm planting the seeds of tomatoes or peppers I've crossed and they come up and I've created something in partnership with these plants, my mind and the world together, I can turn the energy into plotting out the next steps in the breeding process to distract but I don't know how to just sit and hold that feeling without it being so intense and overwhelming. Same as people, really.
I can deflect, distract, pour that energy into trying to drive towards a future with more of the same but I can't, I don't know, inhabit it.
When I'm upset the world comes apart, but when I'm happy the world also comes apart. When I'm upset I can talk through it and get support but when I'm happy? I go into myself, where I'm alone. Maybe I can write and hope someone finds and relates to that message in a bottle flung into the internet. But how do I share that experience? Or, how do I share myself, when I'm happy? How do I remain close?
Sometimes I just cry, and am held, and maybe that's the closest I've got so far.
Sometimes I play, like a dog with zoomies will frolic, but my play is weird and usually focused on wordplay and absurdities and few people can meet me in that space.
Anyhow, I don't know how to do this and it's probably part of why joy tends to come with an edge, I guess the edge of isolation and loneliness.
