How Would You Feel?

Let's just put it out there--I don't like talking about my feelings. It is a frustrating process. It is uncomfortable because I have no practice in it. Growing up, I was "the listener." Everyone always told me about their issues--and I listened. I was kept abreast of the changing social lives, self-esteem issues, and growing pains of all my high school classmates and most of the girls on my hall freshman year. After that first year of college, I realized I had had enough. It was too much. My open door policy ended and my circle of friends got smaller and smaller. But in reality, I guess it was always small--there were never more than one or two people in my life who I actually felt comfortable sharing my life stories with. And even still, I didn't then, nor do I now, like to talk about my feelings. The crazy thing is that I feel everything--intensely. I'm probably one of the most sensitive people I know. Not sensitive as in every little thing makes me emotional, but when I do feel something, I feel it DEEPLY. But trying to explain/describe/relate/review/reveal those feelings to some one else is just plain frustrating and often feels impossible.

I've been frustrated for the past three days about a simple question my grandmother asked me: How would you feel about sending your "daddy" an invitation to your graduation celebration? I should have seen it coming from a mile away--this same issue came up when I graduated from high school and from college. But I was completely confused when she told me she wanted to ask me something but wasn't sure how to ask me/didn't want to upset me. My immediate fumbled response was that I didn't even have any invitations together but that if I did make some, I'd give her one to give him--or something like that. She let me know that some of my cousins were asking about it--how I would feel about that--and said she thought it was time for folks (meaning my parents) to put aside the past. That I oughtta know him--because after all he is my "daddy." She tried to explain that she was just caught in the middle of "it" and that "it" wasn't my fault. Now that I was grown I could make my own decisions about "it." So she thought it would be a real good thing for me to send him an invitation and to get to know him as it is something that she and "Linda" (the girlfriend?) have wanted for a long time. Ok Grandma. I nodded--I smiled--I left.

I knew I didn't answer her question because I don't know how to even try to express those feelings and that frustrates me to no end. The biggest problem is that I've been living with this unknown "it" all my life--the thing that caused my parents to separate shortly after my birth. I'm twenty-some-odd-years-old, and I still don't know why I've know my biological father--wouldn't even recognize him on the street--because "it" is a secret. "It" happened--and the mystery surrounding "it" makes it hard not to feel like the "it" was me. The hushed tones, the coded language, the lack of responses to my questions--over two decades of living with "it" has left me feeling rather numb. I can't even bring myself to be sad any more. I leave the feelings of anger and confusion to my friends who love me and who wonder how I could not know a man that lives a few miles away from me--a man whose mother I used to stay with every summer and still go see just about every week. I leave the feelings of hurt and resentment to my mother who is suspicious of every man I date because of "it." And I'm left with feeling nothing (or an unidentifiable something)--and feeling it deeply.

I know the fact that the question is staying with me means something. I haven't even talked to Dr. J about it yet--partly because I know he'll put on his therapist hat (one of his many professional skills) and ask me how I feel. I am lucky to have a compassionate man in my life who cares about my feelings. But I guess in this whole situation, I wish someone would just tell me--how should I feel?