I'm a little upset right now.
I don't know if it's okay to feel the way I feel when I feel bad.
I mean, sure, I try to smile a lot about the ocean of happy possibilities embedded in everything that happens around me, without risking the regrets befitting an eternal optimist. And I have my reasons for believing in the charms of the universe; I do. I may not have always been privy and graciously aware of those little delights, but I feel like I am now? And now, more so than ever before, the little unsettling faces of my life's general expression have me questioning my entire concept of... emotions. About the way I feel.
I once thought it was okay to feel bad when your mom/dad got upset with you.
About the little things and the big ones. The chocolate-thefts from the refrigerator and the first hint of cigarette smoke. About the first time they caught you with porn, and the times when you don't brush your teeth on time. It didn't matter how bad my 'crime' was, or how 'much' pain I had caused them, I thought it was okay to feel bad because they felt bad. That simple.
That is no longer true, and I feel outraged and confused at the same time. My father has always been a sensible man as far as hearing me out was concerned. My mother, well – she has had her share of trysts with severe emotional trauma, enough to scar significant moments of my salad days, but she has always loved me, and in that love, she has always managed to find an iota of a reason to be okay with whatever cause or effect I was trying to spit out, ever. And it doesn't help that I miss them too dearly at times, because we are living through a time and age that I still don't fully comprehend; the transition of generations that has been mocked so cruelly by the speed at which it all went down, it has left us in a weird place. An unfortunate place where we have chosen neither intrusion, nor sorrow. And there was some joy, some grace, some happiness in knowing that you shared that unfortunate space with them, that they were in it just as much as you were, that somehow, in your misery, you were miserable together. But when that glass shatters and hurts you in corners you didn't know could get hurt, it draws blood. A lot of blood.
There's that kind of blood running through my head right now. And I'm a little upset about it. Don't know if that's okay. Don't know if I'm supposed to feel bad about it anymore.