Emotional armor is not a concept ive ever contemplated or a tool that I ever developed. Just words that others used to tell others, as if the words alone will protect you. I never really had much of it to begin with I’ve always been ultra-sensative growing up.
I was easily bullied by boys, girls, family, i would cry at the hint of being teased. “Wake up! Jacob! Put on your Makeup”, one of the earliest taunts on me for as long as i can remember.
Oh, it got results, on school busses, family gatherings, pretty much anywhere at any time. I was an open nerve to the world, beat up easily, reactionary at every taunt; getting me into fights, crying like a baby.
Oh, and I was a total sore loser too. I took losing personal. My failures at not being able to control my emotions and being shown that I couldn’t with relative ease like other people; it reflected to me, that I was lesser person, inferior to the stronger ones, zero selfesteem in myself for long stretches.
Having your selfesteem destroyed daily and then zero attention given to you by family, while they focused on my older sibling, well it’s not easy. Me, the well behaved quite son. Strong on the outside for my family, but an open nerve to the rest of the world.
I have grown up and I show little emotion in public or in stressful situations. In times of strife or emergency I become calm, hard as diamond, under pressure, but my mind was/and still is a daily battleground nobody ever cared to truly understand. It’s a learned detachment. I was conditioned to be strong on the outside for everyone else and I did it for myself to survive life. I do not belong, I have never belonged.
I wonder what it would be like if I was in a world of love, beauty, sex, and real connection; I’d imagine I’d be a happy person.
Not having emotional armor is because you are not given the chance to develop it; I’m pretty sure it is a reason why I developed anxiety/panic/dissociation disorder that manifested in my teen years (Oh, i did a lot of drugs too, probably held it off for a few more years my guess 😉 ).
I have been conditioned and have adapted outward, to focus on the state of others, either willingly or having it being thrust onto me in situations were you and the others around you, are constistantly focused on someone else’s emotional pain; you are left out, on the outside.
If you ever said to yourself that you will
take on “another person’s pain or sadness”, asked the universe or your angels, demons, gods or goddesses, to take the “pain” onto you, you understand what I mean.
I simply don’t want to see other people in pain, especially those I love. It exacts a heavy price. I have been conditioned to face the world, other people, issues, death, anger, sadness and all it’s cruelty head on. I dont shrink away unless it’s my own pain.
Those like me, have to face the world, and what it throws at us. We ingest the cruelty, the sadness and process it to move on to the next challenge. We don’t want to hate, we dont want to be filled with rage, we consume others sadness and anger, and transmute it.
My understanding is limitless as is my empathy. My desire for justice, equality, and equity fierce. My love is intense, and my logic cold and sharp, my passion endless. I exist in two worlds. A world detached from all emotion, also a world where i care for all. It makes me hard to love. I finally understood this fact earlier this year.
I think in layers and systems, in scale and time, my awareness is as immense as is my compassion. My mind is the product of emotional & functional adaptation to my environment, but really, I’m just survivor like everyone else in this hard cruel reality, were the fair is foul and the foul is fair.
Ecoheretic 