This is my first article from the 500 words a day challenge launched by Jeff Goins. I will most probably not publish everything I write during this challenge, but I will do my best to keep writing every day a minimum of 500 words.

The Undefined Feeling Underneath My Masks

It’s been with me since childhood. It’s still there. It’s a foggy feeling of something missing.

It’s like a melancholia without a specific object. It’s like a regret for something that never happened.

An incompleteness. A sorrow. A sadness. A bitter-sweet taste of something that happened so long ago, that I forgot what it was, but I keep the emotion associated with it.

I am not always aware of it’s existence. It’s like hibernating inside my heart while I am caught up in daily activities.

Working with people, talking, watching a movie, eating good food, being with friends, making love, exercising, focusing on finding a solution to a problem, worrying about something, being caught up in an emotional roller coaster…all these activities are somehow hiding it, making me unaware of it.

But it comes back whenever I take some moments of just being with myself.

Being in nature, walking alone, sitting in silence, and writing in my journal at the end of the day. It’s there.

Sometimes it takes the shape of a deep sadness. Sometimes it’s a light melancholia. But I’ve realized that I’ve been running away from it all my life.

Probably that’s why I am not good at sitting meditation and I prefer the active ones.

Feeling Alone In The Middle of a Crowd

I tend to become a bit autistic when in the middle of a crowd. For example while being at an event that I don’t really resonate with, be it a party or a concert or something that involves lots of noisy people.

Somehow in the moments when everyone around seems to have so much fun my undercover sadness becomes more active and I turn into an observer.

Instead of actively participating at the event I withdraw. Then I leave as soon as possible.

This doesn’t happen if I am with someone that I can connect with it. Then I team up with that person and I don’t feel such an outsider anymore. It’s two of us now 🙂

Most recently I’ve discovered the books of Dr. Janov about the Primal Therapy.

I knew that the life in the womb, the birth and the first few years of our childhood are influencing the rest of our lives but I had no idea in what extent.

After reading these books, I now think even more then before, that one way or another we are all a bit fucked-up.

Birth is a traumatic event for most of us, by it’s nature. Then events before it and after it, that might not seem traumatic for our parents have been perceived as such by us as babies.

So one theory about the nature and the origin of that undefined feeling of lack/sadness/incompleteness came to me from Dr. Janov’s work.

At first I was angry about it, then came acceptance. I didn’t go through Primal Therapy yet so I am not talking from experience.

I’ve just resonated with what I’ve been reading, I made some connections and I accepted that I can’t do much more about this on my own.

Accepting the Feeling Without Judging

This doesn’t mean I gave up looking for answers. On the contrary. But whenever I observe it I just accept it without judging myself for it or running away.

Do you ever experience this undefined feeling of lack or sadness or whatever name you give it?

How are you running away from it? How do you embrace it?