Everything is Doomed to End (And Why That's a Wonderful Thing)
- kayleighgreig
- Sep 13
- 5 min read
Section Editor Bianca Chatterjee reflects on her journey through learning how to feel her feelings and why endings are as bittersweet as they are.
It has been around a year and a half since I last went to therapy. A cost-of-living crisis and an increasingly hectic schedule, where a lot of my time is spent being consumed in worry and work, has rendered me silly in a perpetual cycle of ‘how hard will booking my appointment be after I’ve gotten my mental health care plan sorted?’ and ‘surely I can make the call today.’
Recently, my self-perception has been defined by a small handful of things, and a small handful of things only: law student, law clerk, essay-churner, eldest daughter, affection-seeking and under stimulated. This is a concise list, but unfortunately, the weight of responsibility is crushing, and the latter does not help alleviate the former’s sting.
I turn to the fountain of information that is the Internet, to assist in managing my anxieties surrounding subduing my emotionally stunted Gen-X parents, my consequential fear of intimacy, the current political climate globally, and dealing with whatever comes next.
After ‘sitting with the discomfort’ (whatever that fucking means hahahaha), I journal, ‘EFT’ tap, cuddle with purring cats, blast heavy metal and EDM, do my vagus nerve exercises, and try my best to cry. Additionally, I cope on a more continuous basis, with a near-immaculately maintained calendar and by tracking my menstrual cycle to catch PMS symptoms before they catch me. Maintaining these habits makes me feel a little more self-assured when grief about what could have been or rejection-cringe sinks its teeth.
However, challenges you haven’t prepared for still arise, and sometimes you can’t hide away to cry or huff a purring kitty’s belly (God forbid!). Emotional dysregulation is inevitable and oftentimes, entirely out of your control, despite my best (albeit, semi-delusional) attempts to dissuade myself of this idea.
It’s a minefield out there! You may run into an ex after a year of no contact and be forced to confront the shadow you left behind. You may feel like you’re chasing your best friend, who tends to avoid the hard conversations post-disagreement, to show them you love them and just want to understand.
Or you may just be alone, and have to reckon with the fact that keeping busy is just not enough sometimes to distract you from the mountain of uncertainty that towers higher over you, as the years go by and slough off of you.
The experience of feeling an emotion is a neural transmission of a message that generally lasts 90 seconds.[1] What we often run into are emotional experiences that last way longer, as we deal with the feelings we have about our feelings, called ‘meta-emotions.’[2] Meta-emotions are those feelings of shame, embarrassment and resentment towards our involuntary emotional responses to external stimuli. We tend to get stuck in a loop of rumination to cope with our feelings and justify our experience. In other cases, we attempt to bury our unprocessed feelings and desperately hope they cease to exist instead.[3]
This is overwhelming. I could’ve scared or soothed you by formally attaching a name to the superficial layers of feelings that smother you, before the root of it all delivers its final blow and leaves you wanting to never feel anything again. Maybe you’re now both fearful and delighted—ah yes, the joys of uncertainty!
So now, you go through the motions of feeling your feelings and meta feelings—relinquish superficial control, identify where the physical sensations of discomfort arise, and breathe through it all.[1] Remember to be patient with yourself; it’s something we tend to overlook in the mess of working through all of the tiered intricacies.
This is all easy to write about when I’m not dysregulated. Following the steps above, like a scientific method, is borderline impossible when your heart is techno-paced and none of your inhales seem to reach your lungs.
When it starts to feel like I’m inconsolable, the light at the end of the tunnel to snap me out of it is remembering that everything that starts will also eventually end.
Everything that lives will die, and every attachment that forms will eventually disappear. Nothing is permanent, and nothing is ever truly yours.
Being made aware of this concept was initially so heartbreaking that I’ve spent lengthy periods mulling over how I could prepare to deal with the inevitable pain of ending. It was as if preparing to be hurt was rational, protective, or emotionally intelligent. Putting a wall between the things and the people that I’ve loved and myself never ended up protecting me from feeling everything when the residual grief came bubbling up in its due course.
The only thing I have learnt is that it always comes back. Behind a different name, a different face, a different body or behind a different cityscape. No matter how much burying or compartmentalising you try to do, the ultimate truth is that things can’t truly be resolved if you don’t create their ending and stick with it. The light at the end of the tunnel is that you can be relieved when the discomfort ends, as profoundly as you hurt when you lost what you cared so deeply about.
By adopting this approach with all of your new endeavours, whether learning how to feel your feelings, searching for a way to quell seemingly unending boredom, embarking on a new connection or opportunity, you learn to value all your lived experiences. You pay more attention to the details, you sit in the presence, you love harder and embrace closer.
No matter how significant, how long or even how torturous that moment is, it ends up feeling kinda fun as you embark on ‘unlocking’ each emotion and learning to deal with it. And at the end of the level (so to speak), you feel an immense sense of accomplishment and appreciation for how far you have come.
I am sure that one day, I will commit to returning to therapy so that I can fully master the art of the carefully controlled crash-out. For now, however, I’ll have to wade through the rage-bait online, curate my self-regulating techniques, journal harder and put my phone away when I’m met with an uncomfortable feeling. With my full attention turned to me, the crisis of demise will definitely start to feel a little more bearable. Right?
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