the opposite of fire

the good, the bad, and the sweet spot inbetween

All my life I have felt ~everything~ deeply. I don't know any other way than to have every emotion wash over me completely. My mind has a million tabs open, synapses firing, connections being made, conclusions being jumped too, a visceral, physical reaction to the emotion. It has made my life rich and magical and full. To feel giddy in a way that brings me back to being 6. To experience unbridled joy, creativity and LOVE. Oh to feel love so much so that it spills from your eyes. I've cried enough tears in my life to fill up an Olympic sized swimming pool. Happy years, sad tears, frustrated tears, tears of beauty, tears of joy, tears of heartbreak. I’m so grateful to feel so deeply. To be entirely taken with the magic and heartbreak (even heartbreak is magical in its own way). To love myself wholly is to appreciate all parts of me.

I used to be ashamed of my tears, especially when I was angry because society tells us those tears somehow negate the anger. That if you cry while mad then your anger won’t be taken seriously. It is the patriarchy in its purest form, telling woman to feel less and when we do, we are still not enough, too meek, too quiet. And when we feel too much, when we cry out in frustration, we circle back to being too much. The spiral of sadism that the patriarchy thrives off of.

At some point in college all that feeling turned on its head and suddenly I wasn't feeling enough. Becoming numb. Initially I thought I had lost the ability to feel. And yet that numbness was all encompassing, made me feel like I was drowning. Consumed all my thoughts and sense of being. In its own way, I was still consumed from the inside out but with numbness and overwhelm. Overwhelm at little (and how much) I was or wasn't feeling. I hadn’t lost my ability to feel I had simply lost my joy. I was doing too much in the wrong direction, trying to pull myself up when I should have been lying down to rest. All that overwhelm revealed a critical flaw- I had no purpose. Somewhere around 19 I discovered travel and suddenly all those big feelings had meaning. I finally had something to anchor on too and-in turn- was able to swim to the surface. Exploring the world gave my air the lungs they needed to breathe.

There is a quote by Mary- Kate Olsen where she is talking about the difference between her and Ashley. “To me, the difference between us is pretty obvious. She thinks the opposite of fire is water, and I think the opposite of fire is no fire."

This quote has rolled around my mind for months now. Some people so clearly fit in one or the other category. The glass is half full or the glass is half empty. Do I see the world as water or the abscence of fire?

I see it as both. I can’t (continue) to live my life in such drastic shades of black and white. Sometimes the opposite of fire is water. There is a silver lining in life, when one good thing happens, a bad one will happen eventually. The opposite of fire is water is karma. The give and take, push and pull of the universe. Life’s big swings of pleasure and pain. Sometimes the oppositie of fire is no fire. Simply the absence, the in between. Life can be big and scary and colorful and beautiful and so full of wonder. Life can also be mundane, work and school and your daily commute listening to your favorite audiobook. No fire doesn’t have to mean boring but calm. The nervous system reset, the deep breath, the rainbow after the rainstorm.

I love my big feelings. I love my small feelings. There is a sweet spot in there and I’ve finally figured out what it is. Not feeling more, not feeling less. It’s enjoying, appreciating and holding space for all my feelings. Recognizing that emotions are not linear but a wobbly spiral, expanding and contracting on itself. The sweet spot is allowing myself the space to feel everything and then continuing onward.