It's okay to feel all of the stuff you're feeling. You're just becoming human again. You're not doing life wrong; you're doing it right. If there's any secret you're missing, it's that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that's what they're for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. The secret is that you're doing it right, and that doing it right hurts sometimes.

I did not know, before that woman told me, that all feelings were for feeling. I did not know that I was supposed to feel everything. I thought I was supposed to feel happy. I thought that happy was for feeling and that pain was for fixing and numbing and deflecting and hiding and ignoring. I thought that when life got hard, it was because I had gone wrong somewhere. I thought that pain was weakness and that I was supposed to suck it up. But the thing was that the more I sucked it up, the more food and booze I had to suck down.

"I feel great," I said, trying to decide how I did feel.

Happy and sad, elated and miserable, secure and afraid, loved and denied, patient and angry, peaceful and wild, complete and empty...all of it. I would feel everything. It would all be mine.

I don't know how to feel But I wanna try I don't know how to feel But someday I might Someday I might Think I forgot how to be happy Something I'm not, but something I can be Something I wait for Something I'm made for.

It's okay to feel all of the stuff you're feeling. You're just becoming human again. You're not doing life wrong; you're doing it right. If there's any secret you're missing, it's that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that's what they're for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even hard ones. The secret is that you're doing it right, and that doing it right hurts sometimes.

When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.

Everybody acts like I'm nuts. I'm not nuts I just want to feel it all.

I should have been happy—I was being paid to be here—but happiness does not respond to that kind of imperative; it is no good telling yourself you should be happy. (p. 225).

باتت جميع مشاعر الحياة العادية مألوفةً لديّ ، و إن لم أكن أدرك كُنهها .. كنت أحس بكل شيء دون أن أفقه كُنه إحساسي .

We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

A feeling is something that's really important to have! Real life is not always easy. You cannot always look at the good stuff. But just because something is not positive, it's not like it's going to kill you. You don't have to say, "No, no, no."

All I've got to be is be happy

I was supposed to be having the time of my life.

It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not.