IMO’s and Emotions, #FTSF

“Moments of clarity are so rare. I better document this.”

—Bjork, “Stonemilker”

Opinions and emotions can get us into trouble, but what would we do without them?

“In my opinion…”

And pretty soon emotions take over. We think of opinions as more planned and mapped out. I write and sometimes it comes across as more of an opinion piece, while the rest of the time my emotions have ushered me forward, no telling where it could lead.

When it comes to my emotions and my words, I can’t seem to fully control the outcomes. That’s why blogging can be a risky venture. I think I need to say something, get a feeling or thought out, and then I wonder if I should have kept it to myself.

***

We figure we’ll take the stairs down from the seventh floor, choosing a bit of exercise over convenience. We have the time to kill after all.

I grip the railing on the left side, so as to be able to follow all the many flights, down to the ground floor, even though all my life I’ve been taught to stay to the right, so as to avoid getting in people’s way.

This day in the hospital I learn to stay in the middle as I make my way down the halls of the ward. The walls are lined with objects. I risk bumping into a piece of expensive computer equipment or a cart full of medical supplies or a wheelchair waiting for a patient.

How to follow the path. Stay to the right? Go left? Or perhaps it’s better to remain in the middle, not too far to either side of opinion or letting emotions rule, of bumping into people and their opinions and emotions?

Well, now I am walking at as brisk a pace as I can manage, without the possible threat of getting too fast for my own good and stumbling over my feet or a step as I make my way down.

I hear the familiar sound of footsteps a flight or so of stairs behind. I know what this means.

“Sorry,” the man says, an impatient note to his voice. “I’ll just slip ahead of you so I can move faster.”

He clearly has somewhere to be. Perhaps it’s important, truly, or not. All I know is I want to speak up just then, to show my annoyance with him and all those who make me feel as if I am perpetually in the way, blocking people from getting to their destinations on time.

I feel it in a busy place, like a shopping mall or any crowd really. I’m buffered from behind and there are people in front. I can’t move, except physically, by those all around me. It’s a bit of a claustrophobic feeling, but it affects my emotions, making me want to lash out.

I don’t then and I don’t now either.

The man may indeed need to be somewhere, but I can’t possibly have been going that slow, could I have?

I want to tell the man how I feel, but he is a stranger in a hurry. How could I ever explain to him how his need for speed makes me feel like a useless, inconvenience of an object, not a human being at all? What purpose would that serve? Isn’t all this more about how I let my emotions affect my thoughts about myself, more of an internal struggle?

I don’t know at which moment he realizes I am blind, slow by connotation, or if that even really comes into play this time. It does in my own mind. I wish it wouldn’t.

When you’re blind, you’re often made to feel like you are in someone’s way, someone who can see and knows, with certainty, where they are going. I let this affect me more than I probably should.

So, I listen to Bjork sing about feelings and emotions.

She writes about emotional needs, emotional respect. I let her words wash over me and wonder if I write in the hopes of filling an emotional need or several, to demand some emotional respect. I guess that’s better than demanding it in other ways.

With all the politics of the US RNC and DNC from these last two weeks, with politics in general, emotions and words become emotional words. Of course, politics is emotional for most people. It’s certainly more about the emotions than the actual political, for me anyway.

Facts don’t matter. Reason rarely matters at all. Civilized conversation through words quickly dissolves into talking over one another and strong levels of disrespect.

Here I can use my words to convey my emotions. I guess it’s a bit one-sided, unless someone decides to leave a comment of emotion or opinion.

I often don’t say how I am feeling. After all, it isn’t appropriate to voice our every thought, though it sometimes feels like we do, in that moment.

What kind of a world would it be if we actually did?

Cristi of

Finding Ninee

is the host of this Finish the Sentence Friday prompt on emotions and words.