Meh-ticulous Me

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking around choosing meh, when to choose meh and when to choose to feel the stronger emotions - either positive or negative. I’m not exactly known as being meticulous, but I sure can be in certain situations. I have a very high standard set for myself, which means I am almost constantly analyzing my thoughts, feelings, and actions, taking care of noticing even my smallest nuances.

I’ve been struggling because I felt like I was needing to choose meh across the board and in all feelings. That if I was feeling some particular way too much, then I was reverting to being the me that allowed her feelings to consume her and only felt in extremes. The me that was so easily dissolved into her emotions.

I have felt like that version of myself didn’t have control over herself, that emotions controlled the world that that version of me lived in. I allowed my emotions to make the decisions because all I felt were those emotions. They were all consuming. And making emotionally charged decisions is rarely a good idea.

So, then I ended up trying to lean all-in into feeling meh, which, essentially, was trying to not feel anything to any real degree.

So, the outrage I feel about the horrible realities of the world I now live in became muted. The sadness and disappointment I felt were shoved down and set into a box to be dealt with at another time. Any bits of joy I experienced, I put an asterisk by and told myself that it won’t last forever anyway, so don’t let it feel too good.

And this week, while spending time with one of my favorite people, I’ve allowed myself to feel without hesitation. We laughed together and talked about deep, serious topics. And while we didn’t cry at any point, we acknoweldged much more than meh…

I started thinking about when I want to choose meh and for now, I’ve decided that it’ll be good to have that level of control over my feelings regarding things like someone cutting me off in traffic or my beautiful glass vase full of flowers, that I set outside to enjoy when I let the dogs out, getting blown off the table in a gust of wind and shattering all over the ground, or when someone responds to me in a way that I would not prefer. I don’t have control in those situations, so why use so much emotional energy when it won’t change anything anyway?

I’ve decided that I’m allowed to feel my big feelings, and having them doesn’t mean I’m letting them control me, as long as there’s some benefit to feeling so intensely. Obviously, fully feeling my joy is important and I don’t always have to wander around that track with a caution flag. No matter how fleeting those moments are, they exist and are true in that moment. There’s also something to be said about feeling the anger, disappointment, or sadness to the n^th degree, also. If fully feeling those emotions helps me in any way, then they are worth feeling intensely.

I still am going to be cautious not to make decisions when I am feeling intensely, but I think it’s good for me to feel the balance between choosing meh and feeling the real feelings, rather than trying to suppress them or logic them away.

I still think so much of life is spent on wasted emotional energy over things that you can just shrug your shoulders at and move on, and I still believe that nothing is as good as it feels or as bad as it seems. But when I told my therapist that today, I choose meh, I now am understanding more of what that means for me.