They say feelings come and go. Which is nice, because who likes crying their eyeballs out all the time for the rest of their lives? The real question is: why is that? Why do feelings come and go? And what if they come and go and come back again? The great Frank Ocean once said that if feelings come back, they were never really gone to begin with. Could that, perhaps, be true? Are some feelings just hiding in a super secret closet in the back of your mind, waiting eagerly to come out and surprise you? Seeking some answers below
Feel your feels
There’s not one surefire way to go about this, I think. Of course, some feelings do vanish and just never come back, which is most likely the case if you got terribly sick from that “fresh” risotto your best friend made that one time. Your feels towards risotto will probably never be the same again.
However, other feelings only fade and stay gone by working very hard on it. Usually this comprises only the real stuff. I mean, your sad feelings about that fav white sweater which is now off-pink (not that bad of a colour if you ask me, but hey) due to a red sock incident in the washer are likely to dissolve much quicker and easier than your heartache about the one that got away.
Closure is key
While some things are easy to deal with, others are not. In my view a lot of that has to do with closure. It is pretty simple to toss that pink sweater in the trash and never think of it again. When things are suddenly over with your Mr. Big, it’s probably a bit different. Sure, you could go ahead and try to throw him away too, but in contrast with the pink sweater, Mr. Big has the legs to crawl his way out of the trash can, no matter how hard you try to push back the lid.
This is how I think it could work: ultimately your truest feelings will climb their way back to the surface if you haven’t really faced them yet. A kind of you can run but you can’t hide principle. If your feelings about something or someone are really gone, they will stay gone. If there is still something lingering though, it will find its way out. You can try to run away all you want, but I think you just can’t escape what’s truly in your heart. Whether that’s love, pain, passion or something else.
When you don’t take the courage to look them straight in the eye, sooner or later, they will creep up on you from behind – maybe even when you least expect it. So no, if the feelings come back then they were never really gone in the first place. Sometimes they just linger beneath the surface only to hit full force when you allow your heart to be open.
