True emotions I've never really felt.

Having lived a life of long hard work hours and providing for a loving family I never really had time for emotions. There was always some issue to resolve or project to complete trying to keep ahead of the curve. Then came retirement and the sudden loss of a wife. We had planned to grow old together but she became sick and needed a regimen of medications to reduce the pain and inflammation she was experiencing. This is where I learned patience and empathy through the suffering of my loved one.

When the day came that she passed I felt pain and grief. The pain turned out to be sorrow. An emotion I really never felt until recently when I was able to let myself grief for my wife. The emotion of sorrow I had hidden in the deepest recesses of my mind. Letting go gave way to happiness in finding someone new to share my life with as new friends. Where we go from here only time will tell. This emotion of happiness I experienced was a day where I spent with my new friend and could not stop smiling and feeling right with the world. I had not felt this happy since the birth of my daughter quite a few years ago.

Another new emotion that I had not really felt until now was the emotion of sadness. I did not know how sadness felt until I realized that sadness sometimes brings tears of grief and sorrow together to the point of no control except to just let it take its course and you gain control of your emotions again. But this sadness can be triggered to repeat itself until the mind and body has healed within. The trigger can be a song or just the feeling of the wind as it caresses your whole body while you stand there feeling its touch once again. The thoughts that trigger the sadness will no longer have any power over the unending flow of tears will never go away completely. But know that this does exist will help in controlling the sorrow. This was truly a new experience for a man who thought he knew sadness and sorrow. Only to find that they are both the same just experienced differently in each individual who sadly has to go through the experience because of tragic events in their lives.

The turmoil of emotions within is like riding a roller coaster of happiness and sadness depending on the fragile emotional state I am in. I seem to experience the ups and downs of adapting to a new friend who is a woman. I have many friends that are men. We kind of have an unwritten rule book guys go by. You don’t discuss politics, religion, or wives without making it clear what the boundaries are for these sensitive subjects. The mainstream of discussion is usually sports, work or the latest craze going on in the world. But the rules women go by is in a different rule book altogether. I have yet to understand those rules. But I soon will as long as I keep being reminded that I am breaking some kind of rule. It is the ignorance of these rules that cause all the emotional turmoil that I have found again in a later stage of life. Emotional strife will be experienced at different times depending on the life we live. If you have had one of these yet… get ready for the ride of your life!

I wish you healed and wonderful emotions. Aloha.