Velveteen Feelings

A excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit that nsoroma79 posted tonight:

"Real isn't how you're made," said the skin horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. "

"Does it hurt?" asked the rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the skin horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real, you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the skin horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you're real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose joints and are very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I'm not sure what it is to be real. At one point in my life I thought that my goal, what would make me happy and feel like a good human being would simply to be the most real, that is, the most "human". I had a vague notion of what that meant, but it's not even worth expounding upon right now. Lately I've heard a number of people talk about how they feel crazy or somehow wrong in having certain feelings. But really, feelings are never really right or wrong, they aren't facts, they are opinions, really. Yes, we can learn things from them, but they are never black and white. We shouldn't be afraid of them, though of course sometimes we're frustrated with having them when we wish we didn't. Feelings are what it IS to be real, if you ask me. You say "I have this feeling" and you should own it. I, for one, get melancholic fairly frequently. Some people are upset by this, some people think it is something to be fixed, but ya know what? I wouldn't be who I was if I was constantly trying to fight it. It's mine, and if I am sad I want that sadness, at least for a while. it makes me happy when people share their feelings with me, because first off, it means they HAVE those feelings and are able to communicate them, they aren't afraid of them, and that's lovely. And saying "people don't wanna hear that stuff"...don't we? What more important to talk about than that. If someone else can't handle, maybe they're the ones with the problem. You know, life DOES "hurt" sometimes, but you live it because that's what we do.

Speaking of hurt...my throat is starting to be scratchy and I fear I may fall pray to the cold everyone around me has had last week. No no no. I guess better this week than next week.

I have to finish my paper tonight somewhere among doing laundry, watching Lost and Project Runway.