Category: Words

Getting over being an emotional fraidy cat

While looking for a specific thing I wrote in a blog a while back, I came across this post about change and moving forward. There have been several before this one and since. It’s been sort of my theme for the last couple of years, I suppose.

Because I was stuck.

Oh, I was happy enough. Comfortably numb might be a better description. I wasn’t feeling a lot, and hadn’t for a very long time. I didn’t really know how shut down I was.

I remember the specific moment it came to me that I was (for the lack of a less melodramatic term) dying on the inside. It was Summer. I was out on the patio reading, messaging intermittently with a friend, and listening to music. This lyric from an Aimee Mann song jumped out at me and knocked me on my metaphorical ass:

So here I’m sitting in my car at the same old stop light.
I keep waiting for a change, but I don’t know what.
So red turns into green, turning into yellow.
But I’m just frozen here on the same old spot.
And all I have to do is press the pedal.
But I’m not.

There had been a lot of thinking about change for quite a while before this, but for some reason, this was the moment where it really went from just thought into realizing I needed to do something about it. It’s when I knew that if I didn’t do something soon, I was going to lose everything about myself. Everything that made me who I am was slipping away, and I was just letting it happen.

I didn’t even know there was anything wrong, but I had been an emotional fraidy cat my whole life. Hiding from myself and everyone else. Never feeling good enough for anything or anybody.

After a lot of thinking and counseling and thinking some more, I stepped on the pedal. Or maybe it was really off the edge. That was over 7 months ago. I wasn’t sure where I was going, and I am still not, but I knew I couldn’t stay where I was any more.

Where am I?

Here.
Now.

Learning to sing again.
Learning to be honest on the inside again.
Learning to trust everyone as a default.
Figuring things out.
How I want to live, what sort of people I want to have in my life.
Teaching myself to talk to strangers.
Learning not to be afraid of people, including myself.
Learning that doing things I am uncomfortable with is good for me.
Figuring out what I want and what I don’t.
Doing things just because they scare me.
Teaching myself to ask for what I want.
Learning to reach out to people.
Doing things I have never done before.
Taking steps to become my self again.
Whoever that is.

Financially, it has been challenging. I have no back up now, and that scares me. I will deal with it. I don’t have a choice.

Emotionally, it has been painful. Before I would have avoided the pain. Now I am learning to feel it, deal with it and move through it. It hasn’t been an easy process, but I wouldn’t change it.

I am looking forward to seeing where the road leads.

Wherever it goes, I will be happy. I will have family and friends who I love. Who love me back.

I won’t ever arrive at a destination, and that’s fine because I’ve learned there isn’t one. It’s all about the road.

Forward.

an imaginary conversation about brains

I wish I could just turn my brain off sometimes, don’t you?

Don’t I what? Wish I could turn your brain off? Definitely.

Why would you turn my brain off? Don’t you like the way I think?

Is this a trick question?

Does this brain make my butt look big?

Your brain and your butt are both very attractive.

Thanks.

You’re very welcome.

So what is it about my brain that you would turn off?

The part that never lets anything slide.

I don’t know how to respond to that.

You can be pretty relentless sometimes.

I thought you liked that about me.

Mostly I do, but sometimes you can be hard to deal with.

That makes me feel a little like a misbehaving toddler.

You don’t misbehave, but sometimes you are overly persistent about things in the same way as a toddler. It is frustrating.

Maybe I should try not needing to be right all the time.

The thing that really sucks is that you usually are

I know.

Modest…

I’ve been right about stuff my whole life. I am not proud of it. It just…is.

I see.

I will begin working on being less relentless immediately. By going to sleep.

Goodnight, my favorite big brainiac.

Goodnight, you.

The gift that keeps on giving…doubt

The unfair thing about people who fuck you over is this:

Even though I am making so much progress in being more open and more trusting of people, and even though most people haven’t done a damn thing to earn the slightest bit of doubt from me, and even though certain people have demonstrated more than amply that they completely deserve my trust in them, when someone I care about has poked holes in my trust, then that doubt bleeds over into my other relationships.

I don’t want it to. I hate that it does. Like it or not, though, it is there in the background waiting to pounce on me when I’m not expecting it.

I can catch it when it happens and recognize it as a trap. I can put the distrust back in its cage, mostly. Still…if someone gets a little quiet with me, or doesn’t get back to me when I invite them to do something, or if they cancel plans we have…for at least a second I get the sting of “oh, no…it’s happening again.”

It doesn’t matter who it is. Friend. Lover. Family.

When someone hurts you, when they break your trust, they leave you with triggers and hidden fuses.
Fear. Doubt.

And it sucks. It does.

Then I have to back myself out of that corner. I have to take steps to get past that feeling. I have to remind myself that what happened with one person doesn’t make everyone else untrustworthy. That it only makes that one person untrustworthy.

It makes me angry.

Why angry? Because at that point, when I am full of hurt and doubt toward someone who doesn’t deserve it, the person who was less than truthful to me, the person who stood me up over and over, the person who couldn’t quite be there all the way, is right there again. Getting headspace that is completely undeserved. It’s like my own version of Nelson from the Simpsons pointing at me and going “ha-ha.”

So I do what I can to not freak out, but it annoys me that the triggers are even there in the first place. All I can do is try to explain why I react the way I do, and hope people understand. Or I can pretend I am fine, which might be less likely to result in someone thinking I am being needlessly dramatic.

The pretending I am fine thing is pretty much out. I am trying to be more communicative and honest, not less.

The question is, or maybe it’s more of a dilemma: what to I hope to gain by letting people know what my emotional triggers are? Does that mean I expect people to make a note of all of my issues and tap dance around them constantly?

No. I don’t expect people do do anything in particular except demonstrate some level of understanding and empathy. Bonus points if they are willing to avoid doing things that I have issues with, like letting me know they are going camping for a few days and won’t be in touch (instead of just suddenly being incommunicado) in the same way I would try to be considerate of their issues. For instance if you are a clean freak, I will try a little harder not to leave a mess when I am with you.

It’s like having a stain that I just can’t quite manage to scrub out of the carpet. One of those ones that keep coming up to the surface over and over. Sort of like dog piss. I can keep scrubbing and scrubbing. It will look fine for a while, but the stain will keep resurfacing over and over. With enough scrubbing eventually it will get fainter, but will the stain ever go away completely?

Do they have Stanley Steamer for emotional triggers?

Can I get dogs to quit pissing on my emotional carpet entirely?

Would going to hard wood help?