Feedback

They say some people are kinesthetic, while some are visual, and some are auditive. They say this with respect to how people learn, to what kind of memories are more easily stored, or to how they express their emotions. I have long suspected, and now strongly realized, that a large part of me is kinesthetic. I realize this because, lately, I have encountered experiences that would under usual circumstances make me very happy, extremely joyful, and would have me smiling and laughing and running and perhaps even shouting just because I felt like it. But now, I have barely gotten past a few half-hearted laughs after even very good news, and then I have just settled down into a state of sadly forced apathy.

The first burst of happiness hits me from inside, and I feel like smiling, discreetly at first, and this smile feeds back inside into me, acknowledging the happiness has spread to my body. Then a second, stronger happy wave bursts out and signals me to smile harder, maybe let out a little chuckle or a laugh of satisfaction, which itself feeds back inside into me and continues.

This process used to continue through a full laugh, happy thoughts, raising my arms exclaiming my excitement, finding something to push or pull against, lifting my body from the ground somehow, spreading my limbs as far outstretched as possible, rolling on the floor, walking from one side of the room to the other, pushing myself off the walls, singing, jumping up and down, doing martial art moves, walking out onto the street and walking, or running, or skipping, whichever my body felt like at the time. Each of these movements comes naturally with emotion to me, and the stronger the emotion was, the stronger the physical feedback I felt compelled to act and feel through my body and my environment.

But things have changed. My body is now slower, clumsier, and weaker than it has probably ever been, and I cry both inside and outside as I think of this now. I feel so sorry for having caused this on my body, who is not at fault that I decided to risk it to fast traffic in the morning. I feel sorry for myself, for me in the future - I just find it so hard to believe that I'll ever be able to feel the way I did, because I don't know if I'll ever be able to move the way I did. These days, when happiness comes my way, I am able to resonate it inside me only up until the level of laughs and slight, slow, body movement. Slow, ungraceful, painful movement... not an expression of happiness as I know it at all. This clumsy imitation doesn't resonate into higher levels of happiness, and so the feeling just stops abruptly, like a good song stopping during a good part, or like a glass that can't hold any more water than the level at which it is broken, or like a wind instrument that won't sound right after having its body chipped. I'm trying to describe it... the physical-emotional feedback loop is broken, and any stronger levels of emotion than "light moderate" seem a privilege reserved for the past, and my future seems stuck with a more limited, plain subspace of my emotions. Like the "trial version" of emotions - a limited subset.

Things just seem bleak and flat now. And that is sad. I don't think I can get too sad either, though... I'm going to guess that that is fortunate.