How do you know when you have found something inside you that needs to be felt and processed? It comes to you, suddenly perhaps, and won’t leave until you deal with it. Feelings are not easy to deal with. They leave you vulnerable, mushy, sometimes raw. I have been almost buckled under lately by an overwhelming feeling of sadness that just won’t go away. Sometimes, for no reason at all, I feel all teary-eyed with a sudden lump in my throat. Then I am trying to push something down.

I think this unfelt feeling is grief. It sure feels like grief. I feel like I am missing something, and you feel grief when you are experiencing loss.

I may be experiencing loss of my former stuttering self. For three years, I have been gradually more and more overt with my stuttering, and in turn, more and more accepting. In many instances, I have nearly lost the covertness I had for so long. With the gradual open stuttering came a lightness within me. As my stuttering self relaxed, I was at ease publicly stuttering and publicly disclosing. People remarked that my stuttering has been easy and relaxed and very easy to listen to.

Now, however, there has been a shift. My stuttering is not easy and relaxed. There is tension and I am uncomfortable. I miss the easiness I had. I miss the ease I had talking about stuttering. This is not the part that I wanted to “die to”. This may indeed be the loss that I am grieving.

I talked on the phone with a friend recently. She stutters and has had a long journey of ups and downs, trying to find an acceptable balance with stuttering in her every day life. She said something that quite startled me. And she prefaced it with one of those “I hope this won’t offend you” ( you immediately brace yourself for the worst when someone says that). Anyway, she says that when she first met me, I was bubbly and full of laughter. Now, I seem to have lost  that, and I appear to be more solid.

So, is it the laughter I am missing, mourning? Is solid bad? Am I am not  relaxed and laughing with my stuttering anymore? Is it that obvious? We talked about how the journey takes us in different directions and where this might bring me. 

Feelings have a funny way of showing up announced, leaving you feeling all mushy and raw, don’t they?