…Sometimes it’s hard to tell that it’s easy. I feel things. Let’s call them… ‘feelings’. I know things, or think I do… and for now I’ll call those ‘facts’ while admitting I’m pretty sure that’s not true very often. Still, the fact-y bits are largely what drive my expectations of life…and my ‘feelings’ are, or so I’ve been lead to believe, my responses to the fact-y bits of life going on around me. Except… I don’t think that’s true at all sometimes. There are a few fact-y bits that are fuzzy to the point of being at best wishful, and at worst malicious lies. Are the feelings that result from something that isn’t real, or isn’t true, or is completely misunderstood… real?
Today wasn’t bad, really. An appointment, easily handled. An office visit, another small victory amidst some vaudevillian confusion, and hey – traffic was light and I got a good parking space. For a morning at the VA, I call it a win… but… trying to talk about it at home afterward, and somewhere along the way my mood veered toward madness and I found myself storming off, confused, angry, and anxious. What the hell? I’m not sure what was wrong at all. I don’t know what I was mad about, either… I get angrier than angry, out of no where, over nothing. Fucking hormones. What else was there to do? I walked awhile… and noticed I was near the library. I had no idea it was so close to home. I took time to check it out, and get a brand new library card. (I still like paper books.)
Angst sucks. Why all the drama and tears? Why the fuss and nonsense, all that pointless anger and frustration? There it is though, getting all in the way of having a good time… no one likes it. Too many tears, too much anger, too much stress… and if it is all an illusion, what then? What was it worth? (By the way, before you ask, I also suck at those executive stress toys like puzzles on a string, and such.)
I found some peace in the walking, and when we were all home together the hugs and hanging out felt good. I feel a bit like Pandora’s box, though… and it is so much effort to remain open to Hope.
Evening Light 
Feelings may not be facts, but they are more than reactions. Feelings can be valid causes, as well. And sometimes when they are reactions, they may be reactions not to something in the now, but something in the past, or anticipated in the future.
The times I’ve been angry without immediately being able to identify a cause in the current environment, it is sometimes hormones driving an irritation out of proportion, and sometimes a reaction to an event in the past, sometimes far in the past.
There is a lot of exploration in fiction about whether feelings based on something that isn’t real are real in themselves. While sometimes I root for the characters’ love to triumph (one or both parties experienced some manipulation of emotion), and sometimes I don’t (usually some deception by one or the other was involved), I’ve concluded that feelings are real regardless of cause. And feelings don’t just disappear when contraindicating facts arise. I still have a hard time believing a character (or a person, for that matter) can *feel* love and anger at the same time, but that’s probably because I’m a bit like Tinkerbell in that regard — I feel pretty much only one strong emotion at a time. If I’m angry at someone I love, the anger is pretty much all consuming, and it is some part of me that is not feeling the emotion that is in charge of remembering that I won’t hold that anger forever, and later I will love again.