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My feelings: I don’t know how to organize them. And so have often made decisions and taken actions to try to settle them, cope with them and manage them from the outside. Not knowing how to sort them, or feel them well and not be totally overwhelmed and diminished and deactivated and just suffer them, I was and have been (and am) left to try to endure them and fight against them.

It’s like if there were a shelf inside me, I could put them on, each with a labeled slot, a place, for it to live and be, that would be good. Then I would be able to live with them instead of simply being broadsided by them. They can persist, or not; that is their judgment, their decision. But if I can collate them, identify them, and experience them without total and crushing surprise, shock, and unregulated panic, then maybe, maybe, I can live and thrive with them.

Maybe I can be me and let the good elements of them animate and imbue my life with depth and insight. I can allow them to feed intuition and meaning. I can cherish and trust them. I can let the less positive elements exist where they belong: in my heart, in my head, in my life but not in its driver's seat. I need not control my feelings but instead, care for them. They can be my feelings instead of me belonging to (and being subjugated by) them.

Being tossed and turned around by them with no say in the matter does not work well. I want to own them, possess them, and channel them as I see fit. I want the shelves of them, neatly apportioned, flexible and shifting, to give them homes to be felt, enjoyed (and also not enjoyed) to be a showcase to myself of who I am inside. I want what I think and experience reflected in them while they infuse me and my world with my authentic truths.

I want to feel ok, sure. But I want to be ok feeling whatever I’m feeling and whenever I’m feeling it. I want that to be, at its base, ok with me. I want, I even need, to be ok with my rough edges and parts that feel broken and lost and damaged beyond repair. I want to redeem my pain not by fighting against it, avoiding it, or belittling it, but by feeling it with an overarching sense: it will be ok to feel, no matter how bad it feels and how much I so desperately wish it were different.

I want to breathe, to really breathe, as myself and my heart and my mind and my life thrive, not merely respirate. I want to exchange the lack of self-respect, my denial of dignity to myself, and my denigration for self-possession, forgiveness, and compassion for who I am, have been and will be. I don’t know how to do that yet, or if I do, I don’t know it well.

It does not come naturally to me. I am thirsty to learn, to find the gentleness within myself, and muster a kindness I so often deny myself. Like a dream or an impossible fantasy, I want to love myself and treat myself not as an enemy but as my closest friend. I want that.

David August is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and producer. Please contact him for projects and coaching.