One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
Contrary to what it may seem, I am a very private person when it comes to my emotions. My family and friends have always thought of and seen me as this sunny, flighty, happy, and open person who always smiles and laughs and seems to not have a care in the world.
This is because I have (kinda) perfected the skill of hiding negative emotions. Oh, they’ve seen me angry, they’ve seen me mean, but they’ve never seen me cry, never seen me sad and hurting. See, I hate being vulnerable and for me, showing sadness and hurt is showing vulnerability. Crying for me is a form of vulnerability that only I am allowed to know about, much less see.
I also have this habit of concealing how deep my emotions run. I may show them that I am happy, but they do not really know how really truly happy I am. My family and friends know I love them but I don’t think they have an idea of just how much.
This is not something I planned, not something I’m really proud of, actually. I do this because of two reasons. The first reason is because I want to protect my loved ones from the intensity of my emotions. See, sometimes I just feel too much that I do not expect other people to be able to handle it when most of the time I do not even know what to do with it.
The second reason is that I found that the more I keep these emotions to myself, the less chance there is for other people to hurt me.
This is something I have to change. It is something I am trying to change. Life is unpredictable. What I have now may not be here tomorrow. Yes, I may get hurt, but if the people I love and care for cease to exist tomorrow, it would hurt so much more knowing that I had the opportunity to let them know how I really feel for them but wasn’t brave enough to.
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