Against the Grain
I know that Thursdays are for lists of lovin' but I'm just feeling a different sort of post today. And I think that the point of blogging is to follow one's creative instincts. So I apologize for straying from the topic but...

I've been thinking alot about feelings. That sounds pretty lame, I know. But honestly, how much can we trust them? I am counseling a friend through a difficult break-up at the moment and after each possibly harmful decision that she makes she keeps repeating the words "i'm following my heart." I'm no stranger to this term myself. I live in a permanently grey area to say the least. However when making decisions based on the heart are we really following what our feelings say or are we following what we wish that they were telling us? And which feelings are we following....?

Case in point-when I fell out of Love with my long-term ex a few years back it took me over a year to finally end it. I thought at the time that i was "following my heart" when I stayed day after day, and more importantly, night after sleepless agonizing night. Obvioulsy my insomnia was telling me something. Each and every day the I stayed I truly believed that it was because my heart Loved him. But once it was finally all said and done and I was sleeping soundly for the first time in over a year, I knew the truth. Fear. I was following my fear. Fear of breaking it off too soon. Fear of losing the one person who wanted to marry me. Fear of dying alone.

But then fear brings us to a whole other terrain. For someone like myself, who suffers form severe anxiety every now and again, I honestly can't trust my fears either. Usually a calm and easy going girlfriend, if I get the anxiety bug, a few hours of an unreturned phone call and I have played out a catastrophic relationship event in my head fit for the big screen. As soon asthe phone buzzes andI talk to him again and nothing monumental has occured, the fear subsides and I am again feeling foolish for taking things to such an extreme.

But what then? So we've established that I can't follow my heart and I clearly can't always trust my fears? So where does that leave me? I truly don't mean to sound like a Sex in the City column, but I'm just feeling quite betrayed by these emotions that are supposed to be my guide posts. Was I born with underdevopled instincts and no one ever told me? Or is everyone always living inmy state of confusion? And if so, is anyone else exhausted? Just a thought for ya'll...