The many seemingly contradictory emotions and thoughts we have

We are often coerced into thinking that we can only feel one specific way about a person, a place or a happening. That we must choose between the feelings we hold, while discarding the others that also pop up if they seem irreconcilable. 

The idea that differing feelings cannot co-exist within oneself, that it must be either love or hate, joy or sorrow, and to enforce what sensation we hope will dominate the others.

To quelch one in favor of others, to trample fifteen fleeting emotions to make room for only one. 

Having been influenced by society to respond to people in a specific way, with little room for multiple interpretations and several layers of depth. 

Encouraged to have dislike for former friends, but the feelings of lingering joy they brought us floating to the surface, deeming it unnacceptable to still hold fondness for someone you wish to only associate with one fixed emotion when the partnerships are no longer a focal point of life.

When leaving a former place of residence, institution, town, we are tailored to easily classify the experience as either good or bad, diminishing the impact it has had on us to declare ourselves ready for the future. 

When we try to deny the emotions to be a part of us, no matter how confusing, weird, conflicting and surreal they are, we become frigid to our own truth to be felt and expressed. The impressions we have, are often lasting, and can trigger moods and feelings to simultaneously arise. Several drops of water in a large pond, each containing its own imprint of memory and reactions. 

Someone can trigger both fear, admiration, hope and longing in us, but words are sometimes not enough to describe the bewildering stimulus we have inside. When trying to control the reactions we have, and carefully choosing the response we wish to associate with, it is easy to become blind to the swirling wonders of of life. 

When faced with emotions that seem to contradict each other, know that they can operate together, and that both are valid in its right to be. 

The need to divide, create walls and refusal to interningle differing emotions, often causes a rigid framework that leaves little space for the elusive dance.