The Difference Between Knowing and Feeling.
I could see the tears in her eyes as she fought not to let them flow. Years upon years of questions had brought her to this point; years upon years of wondering, hurting, doubting and longing.
Afraid for so long to face the reality of the situation, she had done her subconscious best to run from this moment, trying to silence the uncertainty that had burdened her soul for longer than she could remember.
We humans flourish when we have a good foundation to work from, but we flounder when we are on uncertain ground.
“It’s like I know that he loves me” she said, her voice breaking as she forced the words out of her soul, ‘but I just don’t feel it, deep down where it matters. I think to him I’m always just someone who is going to be a disappointment, like I’m never going to be good enough for him”.
With that admission, the walls broke, and she wept the tears that had been slowly forming for many, many years.
I watched her weep for a long while, knowing that some wounds have to be allowed to run until they dry. This one took its own time.
Her father, you see, is not a bad man, just one who struggles with his own issues. Never one to show a great deal of positive emotion, never one to express a great deal of sympathy or pity.
He goes through the world with his own agenda, and his own baggage. It’s made it hard for him to learn how to love in the absence of judgment, to care in the absence of control.
And the woman sitting across from me was his unintended victim, the collateral damage of his fate.
I tried to help my friend see that in his own way, he was trying to express to her love as he knew it, although sometimes I doubted whether he had ever felt truly loved, or enough, as himself.
I tried to help her interpret his actions as caring when they were cold, and to see his lack of closeness as a symptom, rather than a sanction.
But it felt like I was trying to hold back the tide.
Because there were so many years where her father had failed to recognize her individual humanity, her right to exist in a way that was authentic to her.
So many times when he had failed to ask how she was doing when he wanted something, failed to tell her that he loved her when she told him that she did. A life time of unnecessary reticence on the part of him had led to a terrible hole in the heart of her.
Although she ‘knew’ that he loved her, she had never really felt loved for who she was, but judged against who he needed her to be.
And the pain of it was tearing her apart. Because ‘knowing’ requires thinking, and thinking is subject to a thousand doubts and questions. When you ‘feel’ something you don’t have those questions, it simply is a thing that is.
A foundation that allows you to move forward in the world with certainty and comfort, because the love that sustains you will always be there for you, beyond doubt, and beyond question.
But if you don’t ‘feel’ it, you’ll doubt it until you die.
It’s been many years since my friend and I sat that day, as she opened her soul to me. I don’t know if the words that I spoke helped her, but I know to this day that she struggles.
Her father, although aging, is still alive, and to this day, she is still unsure of how he feels about her. They are both victims, they are both hurting.
And sometimes, there’s precious little you can do except be there for those who are still struggling to feel.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings