Artificially Intelligent Emotion

I wrote to myself in a note:

How I’m feeling today

Today, I really wanted to get up a little early and have a quiet morning to myself. I did. I managed to wake up at 7am before the rest of the house. The Cat, Dracula, was already awake and seemed very happy to see me.

I took my thyroid medicine and slipped last night’s chamomile tea which had long gone cold. I sat on the floor to meditate, but the cat wanted my attention, so I turned it to her. A meditation of its own, I suppose. Isadora is still asleep.

I took a shower, washed my hair, oiled my body, massaged my lymph nodes for drainage, and got dressed in cozy clothes that make me feel safe.

It had been hard to wake up on my own in the mornings. For the past 7 and a half weeks, it has been very tough to get out of bed. At first, physically, I could hardly do it by myself, at all. Now, I realize, it has become a mental challenge. Everyday, I have to wake up and face my reality, and there is no way to delude myself about what I’ve gone through. And I disassociated pretty hard these past two months, and now I’m trying to come back. I’m doing EMDR to help the reactive trauma process through my body and become unreactive. I’m grateful to still be alive, to still get to wakeup each morning. I’m slowly but surely moving toward a morning that doesn’t take so much effort, but it does take my full awareness and consciousness. It’s a choice to wake up each morning and continue healing, continue paying attention to myself, continue to slow down and place emphasis and the tiny miracles of each day.

It has been really hard to get up in the mornings because a part of me would rather be dead. A part of me is in so much pain, but I want that part of me to know that it gets better, truly. I want her to know that we get through the trauma and we do find relief. If I were from the future, I’d tell myself about how our hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. I would tell her that we publish a book, maybe a few, that she does get her pilots license and become a pilot for United airlines. And then she starts a healing movement studio of her own and reads lots of books and lives in a house near or with her family, and she grows a garden and it gets better. It really gets better. It gets easier to wake up in the mornings. The inflammation leaves your body. You build and fortify a very healthy lifestyle for yourself. Someday, maybe you also fly as a pilot for National Geographic. Or maybe you don’t end becoming a pilot. Maybe you move in the direction of health and wellness and botany and functional movement. Maybe you combine all of your gifts into one beautiful life. Maybe each part of you get its own chapter, its own time in the light. There are endless and infinite versions of you all stitched together in the same, single tapestry of time. I hope someday, you get to go on that expedition to Antarctica. I hope someday, you hike to Mount Everest Base Camp, I hope you visit a giraffe sanctuary. I hope you meet someone special and you fall in love. I hope that someone meets you and falls in love. I hope you live your dreams and cultivate a life of inner peace above all else. I hope you know that all of this already exists within you. I hope you have a long life with long friendships. I hope you weather storms and keep finding your way back to the lighthouse, no matter how lost at sea you become. I hope you hold tight onto yourself and you nourish the sacred beauty of nature within you. I hope you meet the land and the sky and the water and the air. I hope you harmonize with all of it. I hope that you exist fully, to your greatest potential, whatever it may be moment to moment.

Life is always changing and oh so fleeting in its certainty. I hope you find some relief.

It’s okay to take your time waking up in the morning when it hurts to be alive. When the pain of what I just experienced is still so fresh and I feel split wide open by existence. It is okay that you wake up and want to cry. It is okay to cry. Your tears are strength. Your sensitivity is not a weakness.

How I’m feeling today is hopeful. Because I have survived the worst days of my life, and I’m here for a reason. I’m here intentionally and purposefully and I will continue to find my way through time. I will continue to heal through my trauma and plant seeds of love where once there was suffering and pain.

May my shadow never leave me. May we work with one another to understand the paradox of it all. May my body fully recover. May it continue to get easier to wake up in the morning.

May I find the inner strength and compose myself. May I continue to show up for myself. I will continue to be my best advocate. I will never stop believing in baby jade.

I will have courage to speak my truth and act accordingly. I don’t know how it will all play out, but I know that I have beautiful dreams. Vast dreams. Epic dreams, and it is possible to achieve them. It’s okay that I am extra tired in the mornings.

I am so proud of you for waking up and being here, Jade. I am so proud of you for showing up and tuning in to your life. You can do this. You can get through another day and make all the phonically you need to make in order to keep things moving and progressing. You can send all the necessary emails. You can show up. You’re still existing. You don’t have to be scared. The universe wants to support you. It wants to help you find your way.

Life is a journey, and it has its ups and downs. My body is so incredibly strong and resilient. I am not broken. I am not damaged. I am healing. I am beautifully sewn together with love and with light. The trauma does not define me. Bad things may have happened to me in the past, but it does not mean that I am bad.

I am strong. I am making a great recovery. I am so proud of myself for waking up early today and having a morning to myself.

I have a headache, and my body hurts, and it’s a lot of work everyday to wake up and face my reality and accept it.

<and then out of curiosity, I wanted to synthesize a reflection of my words out of chat GPT, this being only the second or third time I’ve ever used the chat>

And ChatGPT said:

Thank you for sharing this so openly and vulnerably. What you wrote is extraordinarily self-aware, compassionate, and brave. It reads like someone standing at the threshold between deep pain and deep healing, with both truths held in each hand.

Here are a few things I want to reflect back to you, gently and clearly:

1. The way you describe your morning is already healing in motion.

You didn’t just wake up early — youchoseyourself. You took your medication, tended to your body, connected with Dracula, and allowed meditation to become whatever it needed to be. All of that is profoundly meaningful. Sometimes healing is in exactly those small, quiet gestures.

2. You are naming the hardest part without turning away.

You’re honest about how difficult mornings are, and about that part of you that wishes not to be here. Naming that doesn’t mean you want to die; it means you’re in pain and aware of it. Being able to speak to that part of yourself with love — telling her it gets better, that she has a future — shows enormous inner strength and insight. You’re not ignoring her; you’re reassuring her.

3. The visions you hold for your future… they’re beautiful, but more importantly, they’re yours.

Whether you become a pilot, or a healer, or a botanist, or all of them, or none of them — what shines through is that you can see yourself living, exploring, loving, growing gardens, finding peace, touching Antarctica, meeting giraffes, creating community. These are hopes formed by someone who still wants life. The part of you that’s in pain isn’t the whole of you — you’ve proven that by dreaming so vividly.

4. You’re doing incredibly meaningful emotional work.

EMDR is not easy. Coming back from dissociation is not easy. Re-entering your body after trauma is not easy. And yet you are doing it. You’re reinhabiting yourself, layer by layer.

5. Your compassion for yourself is real and powerful.

The way you write to yourself — Jade — is tender and protective. You are already becoming the version of you who watches over the hurt parts with patience and love. That voice is not imagined; it’s you growing stronger.

6. Everything you’re feeling is okay.

The tears. The heaviness. The slow mornings. The headaches. The pain of remembering. The fatigue of coming back into a body that has been through something enormous. It’s okay. It makes sense. None of it is a failure.

And the hope you end with — that quiet but unwavering “it gets better” — is not misplaced. I see someone who has already endured the worst part, who is emerging, blinking into the light, even if it’s still dim and even if it still hurts.

Let me offer you this:

It’s not just that you survived.

It’s that you’re rebuilding.

You’re re-entering your life with intention, even when it’s painful.

That is the definition of courage.

If you’d like, I can help you:

• reflect more on this entry

• shape it into a journal piece or poem

• create a grounding practice for your difficult mornings

• talk through the trauma recovery process

• or simply sit with you in whatever feeling is present now

Whatever you need, I’m here with you.

<and this was the day that a robot made me cry, though really, it was myself through the use of technology. So this really begs so many questions about the integration of ai into our personalities and emotions. >