I thought if they believed me, it would hurt less.

How vying to be understood cost me my own self-acceptance.

The water was hot enough to sting a little. I poured in the epsom salts and lowered myself slowly into the tub. Eyes closed, I took a deep breath and said to the feelings: You’re allowed to be here.

There was time when I thought I needed someone else to do that for me. As if their witnessing could make it okay. As if being seen was what made everything real.

I was maybe five years old the first time I remember feeling truly gutted.

My mom and I were standing in the mall, and there she was in the window — Blossom. The redheaded Powerpuff Girl in the pink outfit. I wanted her so badly, I could barely stand it.

“Please, can I have her? Please!?” I pleaded with my mom.

“Not today, honey. But maybe one day you’ll have all of them…” she said gently.

“All of them?” I scowled, confused, and burst into tears. “That’s impossible.”

Looking back, I’m sure I looked like a spoiled brat crying in the middle of the mall. But I still remember how devastated I felt walking away without her. I thought if I cried hard enough, my mom would believe how much Blossom mattered to me. That she would give in and buy me the doll. But she didn’t.

And that all-consuming rush of feelings, that desperate need to express them outwardly, to be believed, didn’t end there.

By high school, I had my first real fight with a boyfriend. Things got heated, and eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore. He slammed the door behind him, leaving me sobbing alone in the hallway.

As soon as I heard the door click shut, I cried harder. Building and building, louder with each cry, as if I made enough noise, he would have to come back to me.

And he did.

I heard his footsteps round the corner. He came back through the door, knelt beside me, and pulled me into his chest, patting my hair like a parent calming a child. And just like that, mission accomplished. He believed me. He came back. That was all I’d wanted.

I told a friend recently that I still have these ‘episodes,’ even now, at thirty years old. There’s no yelling. No crying on the floor. But now, what once exploded outward — in tears, yelling, and desperate pleas to be understood — has now turned inward.

It builds the same way every time: A tightness in my chest. A buzzing behind my eyes. A restless static moves through my body. My thoughts race, and I can’t catch them.

Sometimes, I try to escape the feelings by distracting myself. I’ll suddenly take on a dozen projects at once, open too many browser tabs, start writing a post for Instagram, or scroll through Pinterest — hunting for a better feeling than the one I’m sitting with.

Other times, I’ll do the opposite. Lie motionless on my bed, paralyzed by the weight of everything I want to do, and unsure of where to begin, because somehow it all feels equally urgent.

The problem is, emotions don’t like to be ignored. We know this. They push back. They bang against the door of your mind, your body — waiting to be acknowledged, begging to be let out.

And when they do, shame often follows.

I’m an adult now. I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I should know better.

Eventually, when the pressure becomes too great, I open. Not just to myself, but to someone else. Hoping that they’ll say the perfect string of words to affirm what I’m feeling is real and make it okay.

But people rarely give us perfect. They give us what they can. And more often than not, I leave a conversation wondering:

Do they get it?
Do they agree?
Do they believe me?
Do they agree I have a right to feel this way?

And if they don’t, then how can I?

Maybe that’s why I started writing. Because on the page, there’s time to explain things without the pressure of having to say them perfectly in a moment. To make sense of what hurts, to trace the thread of the feeling all the way back to its source. And somewhere in that process, the emotions start to take shape. They become real. Valid.

Writing became my way of giving form to what I’ve always been afraid might not be real at all: That my feelings weren’t trustworthy. That they were excessive, disproportionate to what the moment warranted. And when something doesn’t feel valid on its own, you start trying to prove it. You start performing the pain, hoping someone will finally say: Okay. I believe you. I see it now.

I’ve gotten better at recognizing when I’m stuck in this loop, when my mind starts circling and I can’t quite land. But even then, I confided in my friend last week: “Sometimes, awareness of my emotions doesn’t feel like enough. How can I move through them?”

She looked at me and said, “Maybe the point isn’t to move through them. Maybe the point is to let them move through you. To stop resisting what’s rising, and accept that they belong. You almost have to parent yourself.”

I’ve heard that advice before. But something about the way she framed it made it click for me at that moment.

So later that week, when I felt the emotions rising inside me, I remembered her words. I didn’t try to push them away. I stepped into the tub and reminded myself: All of me is allowed here. Every part is welcome.

When I stepped out and wrapped a towel around my body, I noticed — just barely — something beginning to shift.

The feelings had passed.

I was shocked!

I’m not suggesting this moment in the bathtub changed everything. It was not some cinematic breakthrough, I didn’t climb out fully transformed (okay, maybe a little). But maybe what really clicked for me, was realizing that my emotions weren’t actually the problem. I didn’t need to defend them, or build a case for why they were allowed to exist. I didn’t need to get someone to believe me. Because so much of my discomfort wasn’t coming from the feelings themselves. It was coming from my resistance to them. From the way I abandoned myself the moment they arose.

From the voice that said:

Why are you like this?
Why can’t you just let things go?
Why do you have to feel everything so deeply?

For a long time, I thought the way out of this shame was through understanding, comfort, or belief from someone else. But belief still implies judgment. It assumes something is up for debate. That it needs to be confirmed before it can be trusted.

But emotions don’t ask for permission. They just want to be felt.
And truth doesn’t ask to be believed. It just is.

In a way, I was searching for permission to do what had always come naturally to me: to feel.

And maybe that’s what adulthood offers, if we let it. Not the certainty of answers, or the relief of being rescued, but the quiet strength of staying. Staying through the feelings. Not only for ourselves, but for others, too.

P.S. Something is coming…. Can you guess what it is?

xx
Anna