How Do You Feel?

I remember this poster from my high school guidance counselor's office.  I liked it because I enjoyed going through the faces one by one, doing a mental checklist... "Is this how I feel today?  How about this?"

But if you asked me to do that today, I wouldn't be able to.  These days, it's rare that I feel any one thing for a protracted period of time... in fact, there are swaths of time when I'm honestly not sure that I'm feeling anything at all.  In the Calm app that I use to track my daily emotions, I find the lack of an icon for "mixed" or "neutral" distressing.  There are times when I really need something more than the nine emotions allotted to me for choices.  Luckily, when I'm settled enough to track my emotions, I'm usually in a place removed from anything distressing or stressful - so I've got a lovely streak of "calm" and "relaxed" and "content" icons in my calendar.   But I feel that's not an accurate assessment of my days... rather, it's a log of how I felt at a particular moment in my day.

I long to know how I feel.  I truly want to be able to answer the question, "How are you feeling?" with a single, specific adjective.  I want it for me, for my own peace of mind... so that I know for sure how I feel, and can defend it with evidence:  Yes, right now I am feeling happy, because I feel a lightness inside of me and I'm smiling and I want this feeling to go on and on.  Or, At this moment, I'm feeling frustrated.  I want to write something, but my mind is drawing a blank and I've never trained myself to write when the words aren't coming.  None of this Well, honestly, I don't feel particularly sad or particularly happy - but I'm not angry or lonely or anxious, either; is the absence of negative emotions "happiness?"  But I don't feel anything particularly positive, either, so what does that say?

I may have nobody but myself to blame.  When I was having frequent panic attacks, I used to long for nothingness... absence of all emotion, I thought, would be infinitely better than having fear and anxiety all the time.  Maybe I learned to do just that - to shut off my emotions, so that I no longer have any strong feelings to cope with.  No joy, no grief, no fear, no exultation.  No... anything.  

I'm not sure how I feel about that.