The warehouse

A conversation a while back prompted this one. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the subject of feelings and emotions, trying to find an adequate way to describe my perception of the world. I'm a great believer in analogies, but this one has defeated me for some time. The best I had been able to come up with was that describing feelings for me was like asking someone who had been born blind to describe 'red'. However, that really was a little too simplistic and missed out a large portion of my reality. It failed in as much as it ignored the existence of feelings or emotions that were impossible to describe: the blind man is not even aware of colours, other than through other people's descriptions of them, but I am aware at some level of emotions and affects.

There's a warehouse very close by. I can see into it sometimes; I know there are things there, but I can't enter it. I don't know what the things are in the warehouse - they're shapeless, covered over with tarpaulins or stacked in dark corners. I can sense them, and sometimes they affect me, sometimes not. Some of the things that stack up in there are harmless and it doesn't matter to me that I can't go in and do anything with them. Some things come and go of their own accord and their part of the warehouse is self maintaining - never so full that it causes problems. Some things that stack up are toxic: I can feel their effect like radiation through the warehouse walls. I get tense. Yesterday, my blood pressure was at a crazy level, I had a headache that made me feel ill. I experienced stabbing pains that made me think of an old surgery and it felt like the wounds had opened up again.

If I try to describe what's in there, I can't. It feels like someone sitting on my chest and at the same time as though someone has gone through my mind and removed all the words that relate to what I'm trying to describe. All the synonyms are gone, all the concepts. I'm left gesticulating emptily, waving my hands to illustrate a concept I can't see. It's always accompanied with a sense of slight panic and une