Release of emotion

Like a lot of things, when it comes to expressing emotion, society has a clear idea of what is right and what is wrong. This often doesn’t take into consideration the fact that we’re all different, and we experience emotion in different ways. Some of us can bottle it up, hold it in and then experience a slow release when we’re alone; some of us don’t even see the emotion coming and it can emerge when we least expect it. 

When it comes to emotion driven by grief, we can somehow be completely betrayed by our reactions. I’ve always found that grief-led emotion is utterly raw; and it can also be expressed in ways we just don’t recognise in ourselves. It adds a whole new, and sometimes frightening aspect to losing someone. 

Before I lost my dad, I was the wise cracker, making people laugh gave me purpose and I can’t remember a time when I was angry or destructive. Almost overnight, I became a 15-year-old holding time bomb; my emotions were attached to a grenade and no one had a clue when the pin would get pulled – least of all me. 

I would be dragging myself through a day, something minor would crop up and I’d kick a door or punch the wall. I would almost not know it had happened until after, when the adrenaline burned off and the pain kicked it. I would suddenly look at the destruction I had caused almost as if it hadn’t been done by a someone else. For a split-second, I would be mystified how it had happened, when it had happened – it just wasn’t who I was, who I had known myself to be; so how had I become this?

Then, inevitably, the crippling shame would kick in. I was a student, living in my mum’s house and I’d have to fix whatever I had broken. I’d call my Grandad, I would break down, utterly humiliated and full of regret. We’d fix whatever I’d done, but the shame sat inside my stomach like a stone, for weeks and months. This Jekyll and Hyde persona bore no resemblance to who I had been. I had always been someone who had something funny to say; a joke lurking just beneath the surface. Now, I was someone who could turn into a monster; the comedy replaced by an uncontrollable anger that was always bubbling, threatening to overflow. 

It was always when I was alone, and my anger would be taken out on inanimate objects; I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just have a really good cry like normal people. It wasn’t until I spoke to a therapist a few years later, that she helped me to normalise this release of emotion. We talked about how it’s obviously not okay to be destructive like this and we looked at getting to the root cause of it. Beyond losing my dad, I had never had the chance to learn how to manage my emotions. 

Going through what I did, at such a young age, before reaching adulthood, was clearly going to have an effect on me. I guess part of that was how I was unable to process emotion. I had been pretty lucky up to that point; I didn’t have a huge amount of negativity to deal with. Consequently, I didn’t know how to deal with these waves of guilt and depression. I didn’t want to cry; I didn’t like how it made me feel. I also didn’t have time to grieve in that way. I had school, then college, work, and my mum to worry about. The times when I did cry, became epic events; days on my own feeling as low as I could be. But most days, I felt like I just have to get up and get on with it. 

That inability to examine my grief, to unpack it when I felt it, meant I just wasn’t coping. It was a classic case of the old adage – I was ‘bottling it up’. Therefore, when something seemingly minor happened, the emotion, lurking just below the surface, exploded and wreaked havoc. 

Others may have broken down in tears; I ripped my hand apart putting it through a double glazed door (not a smart move for a guitarist). For a long time, I told myself it was beyond my control. But, if you can’t control something, then it’s controlling you. So, I did everything I could to stop pushing through the pain, and to opening myself up to it. Whenever I felt that heaviness, the onset of grief or depression creeping in, I stopped running in the other direction. I turned and faced it, and dealt with it. I did all the things I failed to learn as a teenager, because I didn’t get the chance. I became very self-aware; I stopped smiling through the bad times and forcing myself to feel a certain way. I realised, to miss my dad, even years later, didn’t make me weak or unhappy. I can be blessed in life, feel gratitude but also feel down sometimes. I can be away for the best weekend with people I love, and still miss the people who aren’t there, without ruining it for myself. 

It took me such a long time to learn how to take care of myself. I realised that you can force negative emotions down, you can ignore them, but they don’t leave you. They just wait, and strike when you’re at your most vulnerable.