Please don't judge me on this, but when I was a teenager, early 20's and a very active alcoholic, I use to hang with like mind folk in dingy places. I've witnessed fights and would find them exhilarating. Perhaps that was all I could manage to feel back then I'm not sure.

Yesterday I was standing in line in a dept store and to women in front of me began bickering, then suddenly one slapped out and the other grabbed her hair and I side stepped out of the way and immediately turned away and stood looking away and found it disturbing, but it was in this feeling of finding it disturbing that I realized I'd connected with real feelings, as disturbing as it felt, it was comforting for me to feel this, to find it disturbing, to be able to see what had happened as a form of "madness" on behalf of the 2 women involved.

I realized then that being alive means feeling disturbing feelings as well as nice feelings, and this is what I have been missing all my early life, the ability to feel anything, always avoiding it, but now seeing that its this that we need to feel, all our feelings, we can't just feel the good and be fully alive, we've got to feel that which repulses us too. I'm always thinking, yuk don't want to feel that, but I felt more human in that moment of repulsion then I've felt in a long time.