Hello queers, we almost made it through 2022
It being NYE inevitably made me conduct a self-check-up and assess the year wrapping up (even though twitter keeps personally attacking me for spectacularizing the year-end and mindlessly contributing to the chronically online discourse).
2022 has been the year of realizing stuff. Like a ton of stuff. It was also the year I turned 30. I was so real when I predicted the inevitability of my ageing on the day I turned 20 and said, 'once you hit 20, it is practically 30'. Oh, dear reader, how right I was.
Around my birthday, I dabbled in my emotionality and interoceptive awareness, i.e. I watched Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart on HBO Max. She details how language not only describes but also constitutes the emotions we experience. Thinking about language’s performative implications was layered as I looked at the colonized parts of my brain dubbed in a second language. It was almost too self-evident how language can cut the same emotional realm differently. Hers was a welcome invite that encouraged me to go beyond feeling sad or happy or anxious or numb, just null. The promise of narrowly defining emotions and fine-tuning our receptors is that it helps reveal the true nature of what we feel. Having the language for voicing what we experience and how we really feel, Brown advocates, have transformative potential.
Throughout the year, in a not-so-systematical way, I have tried to trace my emotions. I guess I hoped this self-monitoring and measuring feelings would somehow translate into communicating them better so that others could see the interior—demystification of some sort that would eventually spill over my everyday life. The five-part HBO Max show could only initiate such a big project but needed more sophistication to be an apt resource to demystify my unique biography.
So, as the well-functioning neoliberal consumer subject that I clearly am, I downloaded an app for ‘all that’: How We Feel. This lovely app invades my screen hence my attention with notifications demanding to know how I feel thrice a day. The app offers a 2x2 [high/low energy x un/pleasant] matrix for users to locate their mood and dive deep to salvage a precise label that captures the feeling accompanying any given experience. However, my engagement with the interface did not feel like picking that one correct name for my emotions off of a catalog or a menu. After all, the hyperfragmented list of emotions was teaching me new emotions signifying certain tinglings and sensations. The list was actively shaping how I understood my feelings.
On the days my fidgety, anxious self was making a scene, I turned to the blue-coded emotions (unpleasant emotions in low energy state). The list did not stop at the usual suspects, e.g. sad, discouraged, and tired. The app introduced nuances: some days I thought I was sad turned out to be morose times where sadness meets gloom. I was not just pessimistic, but feeling glum. The word discouraged was not specific enough, not colored by my hopelessness, so it turned out I needed despondent to tell my story. Most days when I feel alone, even though I live with a cat, my possible sadness is of a particular kind: forlorn. I was familiar with meh, though I had never taken it for emotion. One had so much to learn.
My turning red manifested itself as feeling irate, peeved, impassioned or jittery.
When I was exhilarated, that high spirit differed from elated or ecstatic. It was possible to feel pleased, pleasant, energized, and eager because there were words for all those shades of yellow.
It turned out the experience of feeling at ease deserved its own signifier. A state of mind to be cherished. And tranquil, serene, and safe. Carefree.
'Connected.'
'Included.'
'Heard.'
'Appreciated.'
'Supported.'
'Loved.'
I don’t know what months of tracking my emotions have yielded. I am unsure whether Brené Brown’s promise is held, uncertain that the atlas of my heart contains the treasure map.
I can, however, hope and dream that the new year contains experiences that will make me feel. Make me move. Perhaps, not in the way-too-specifically-prescribed manifestations of emotions. Yet, one can still wish.
To feeling mellow and balanced, engaged and challenged, hyper and livid, and even meh. Cheers.
Happy new year.