Feeling Anew

I’ve been thinking this week about one of the most beautiful things about the experience of living a life that is depression free after so many years of depression. It’s this – I can feel again.

For all those years of depression, I lived in a constant state of pain that eventually numbed my ability to feel anything but the pain. I lived in a state of numbness, unable to truly enter into any emotion fully. I knew I was miserable, but that was it. That was the normal reality of life.

I reconnected with an old friend for coffee earlier this week, and was sharing the story of God’s healing in my life, and it hit me again how beautiful it is to be able to feel things.

I suppose it seems ridiculous to someone who has never experienced a lengthy loss of the ability to experience a breadth of emotion, but these days, I celebrate every tear, every moment where I am overcome with laughter, every momentary sensation of awe. At times, the wide breadth of emotion leaves me feeling like I have entirely lost any sense of equilibrium. I cry at EVERYTHING these days, but I laugh at everything too. It seems weird to me, even a year and half later, that I can again feel things. In fact, I was so numbed, that it took probably the first year for me to truly understand what I’d been missing, and why I was suddenly so “emotional” about everything.

And so, this morning I sat on the c-train on my way to work, and marveled at the beauty of the mountains in the early morning sun. I smiled as I felt the sun work to warm my face. A few months ago, I celebrated the ability to grieve.

I love that I feel things deeply. Emotions are such a blessing of God, such a beautiful act of healing in my life!