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Post-Bicameral Progression
Janis Butler Holm
She hadn't known she'd feel this way. How could she have known, not having
experienced this experience before, not having had any idea that such feelings
would accompany such an experience? What she felt was unexpected but could
not have been anticipated. She knew that she couldn't have known how she'd
feel.
Most
certainly, feeling this way was not something she could have predicted.
Generally, she liked to know in advance how things would affect her. She
made an effort to think about how she was going to feel about things before they
happened. She didn't like to be caught by surprise, and, as a rule, she
was not caught by surprise. When she was, she wondered whether she should
have expected to be surprised. In this case, however, it was clear that
she couldn't have known how she'd feel.
Now, feeling
this way, she wondered whether the feeling was a good feeling or a bad feeling.
The advantage of thinking about feelings beforehand was that sometimes she could
ward off the bad feelings. Usually, when she could anticipate how she
would feel, she could shape those feelings into good ones or, at least, useful
ones. Then, when the feelings came, she knew what they were and could be
certain they were the appropriate feelings, having thought about them ahead of
time. In those cases, she knew how to feel about her feelings.
But in this
instance, she was not sure what to feel about what she was feeling. She
disliked not being sure because it signaled a double failure: not having
anticipated her current feelings (however unlikely that anticipation may have
been) and not having anticipated her response to unanticipated feelings.
The only
feeling she felt clearly was the feeling of irritation at not having considered
how to respond to unexpected feelings. She wondered about this irritation,
whether it was a useful feeling despite her discomfort or a bad feeling because
of her discomfort. And she regretted not having anticipated her response
to her irritation (however unlikely that anticipation may have been).
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