We were asked to pick an emotion and write about it through a personal lens. We had 10 minutes to do this, so judge accordingly.
Disappointment. A feeling I feel most often. Or it seems so because I've only recently (in the past couple of years) gathered the courage to name it. So it sticks out to me that much more.
Why the resistance to acknowledging disappointment? Because it is often shrouded in shame.
Disappointment for me is a very self-directed emotion. Disappointment in another usually manifests as disappointment in myself.
There is an inherent embarrassment in admitting to yourself that you actually wanted something. Often times, against your better judgement. And that you were left alone and bare in your wanting. Unmet. Left to pick yourself back up and continue doing the life thing.
There is also a delicate dance of accepting this particular disappointment without falling into crushing all hope forever. (It does feel safer to do that, yes.) But at some point, you do need to do the embarrassingly brave thing of still holding on to some hope.
A hope that is more vague and abstract... a hope that doesn't have a face, name, body this time. A hope that will attach itself to all those things again in the future when the conditions are right. A hope that will try to avoid repeating the things that led to disappointment before, but deep down, knows it might just do those things again anyway.