Waxahatchee, “Breathless”

Every so often I find myself very…detached, let’s say, from the way I actually feel. Or at least very measured. I can look at something that has happened or is happening and realize I’m deciding how I want to respond rather than actually responding. There’s a part of me looking at an email or a text or listening to a person’s voice and thinking oh, I guess I could decide to let this make me cry? but at the same time I’m counting change to buy spinach or tweeting something flippant (ugh) or gossiping with someone on Gchat (double ugh). I know that’s probably a normal amount of compartmentalizing my #feels in order to get through the day, but sometimes I think I’m too cold, or too in control, or too…something. I’ve always thought emotions were something that happened to you and not something you had to decide to let happen, or at least that’s how real emotions worked, but more and more I’m finding myself experiencing the opposite.

This is a song I’ve started playing when I’m testing myself to see how I really feel. “Are you really sad, or do you just like the idea of being sad,” I will ask myself, an interrogation to get THE TRUTH my conscious brain maybe CAN NOT HANDLE. The first line (you look at me like I’m a rose/singing a song that you don’t know) is normally all it takes. Sometimes we need a little external push to figure out what’s going on internally, I think. Maybe. I can’t decide.