"Nothing" or Releasing vs Stuffing Emotions

Something is missing

Something special, important.

Where has it gone?

What has it left?

Love – hate?

No, nothing.

I wonder –

Shouldn’t there be something?

Sadness, anger, pain?

There are no tears

And no aches.

I haven’t the time,

The room,

The need.

There is NOTHING.

A few days ago I had a close friendship end. It was both unexpected and unilateral. I come from a history of abandonment and rejection since very early childhood. The poem above was written when I was 15. It describes my lack of feelings over the abandonment of my father. I survived childhood by taking every emotion and locking it away, save for rage which I discovered made a good defense, and so I cultivated that emotion (as did my youngest brother). It wasn't till my early 30's that I began to realize how I had handicapped myself. I couldn't recognize emotions in others or acknowledge them in myself.

Well in these last few years God has been healing a great many things in me, and the ending of this friendship has really highlited that for me. After my friend called to say that we would no longer be able to hang out or talk, I cycled through the same raging torrent of emotions: anger, sadness, loneliness, pride. I lay on my bed and almost litterally cried all night. But this time I did more than that, as I cried I also talked constantly to God (even yelling at Him at times in my self-pity-- Ps 88 is good for this, but try Ps 25 to get yourself on track after you vent). By just the next day I was finding moments of calm. I was able to pray for my friend, bless her, forgive her and release every thought and emotion to God, asking Him to be the Lord over them. In that, I no longer had to be in control.

It is just three days later, and I realized that those emotions aren't there. Like the above poem there is "nothing." But the why is different. The emotions are like an underground spring welling up water into a barrel. The emotions, like the water, just are (neither good or bad), when you stuff them away in a locked down barrel (of finite space) they go unnoticed on the surface but are still there building up in pressure till they spew forth one day (generally in a totally unrelated and unwarented situation). But if you immediately pipe them up to God (release them), then quickly you reach the bottom of the barrel. A few slow drops will trickle in (as you pass this or that place where once the two of you did this or that etc.), but you so quickly offer them also to God that the barrel is essentially empty, and you are at true peace.

This is just such the coolest and amazing thing not inside me. I keep running my tongue over it like when you feel where a tooth was pulled. There used to be something there and now it just isn't. It is no longer a part of you. How odd.