Once More, With Feeling

I'm tired of the snow. I am glad to have the time off work and school, but the inability to go anywhere makes it difficult to put my free time to good use. I feel like a caged animal, and I'm afraid I'm starting to act like one too. I've been really irritable the last few days, and the weather seems to be making matters worse. I don't feel manic or depressed, just irritable. I recognize that my pre-existing irritability makes the things that are bothering me seem insignificant or even invalid, but they feel very real to me. I can list them, plainly, and they have continued to bother me over the course of the last three days, so they must be rational right? And even if my emotions are out of control, and I'm in a state of mania are my feelings any less valid?

You know what hurts the most? When the people that are closest to me, that I love more than anything, invalidate my feelings by questioning the state in which I experience them. I believe that feelings, any and all of them are always valid to the person that they belong to. No matter how "irrational", subjective or unfounded those feelings may be, they are real to that person, that is their truth and it deserves acknowledgement. You don't have to tell me that you like them or that you agree, just that you acknowledge them and that you hear me. 

That's the issue I guess, I don't feel listened to. True, I haven't said a whole lot about it, but who's gonna wanna talk more when they feel like nothing they say will be heard anyway? 

I'm stuck in my house, and I am going stir-crazy. I want the house to be cleaner, I want my roommates to be more self-directed and I want to stop being the crazy person who has unreasonable needs and expectations. 

I'm tired of the snow. It's heartbreaking that I don't have my little brothers, or sisters to play in it with me. Instead, it was three full-grown adults and a dog today, walking aimlessly around a park covered in white. Today I don't want to be a roommate, or a girlfriend, just a sister and daughter, like I know how to be. This snow storm is nothing like the last snow storm Portland saw, when I was a junior in high school. Then my family was still together. I have been trying to figure out why this snow doesn't seem to stir the same spontaneity, innocence or playfulness in me as it would have a few years ago. I thought it might be a sign that I have fully come into adulthood, or that I am depressed. But I realize now that it is easier to think of the snow as a nuisance, than to think that this is one snow storm I won't be able to ride a sled down a hill with Max, or build a snowman with Zach or throw snowballs at Maria and Lulu. 

I'm trying to make sense of my feelings, all of them.

Only relevant because it has to do with more feelings, I was watching another episode of Law and Order SVU tonight, and I found some scenes specifically difficult to watch. It may seem obvious to most that a show like Law and Order SVU would cover sensitive topic areas, and without describing the one scene I was watching, it was related to a topic that would be hard for many people to think about. With that said, I found myself being triggered by what I saw and unable to stop watching in time to avoid the feelings I am now experiencing. I am not yet ready to write about what I saw and how it made me feel, or the possible causes for my reaction to it. But maybe one day, I will be courageous enough to share that part of my life experience with my readers.
For now, please understand that right now, and many times before, I have more feelings than I know what to do with. But each and every one of them are mine, they are real, and they are important.