Here’s the short list of what I’ve learned in the past few years:
1. Don’t date outside your social circle. There’s a reason you’re not friends with these people. BELIEVE ME, there’s a reason you’re not friends with these people!!!
2. Don’t date inside your social circle. Unless you’re prepared to find a new social circle and/or are better than I am at pretending everything’s fine.
Here’s what my son said when I told him, for the 732nd time that no, I can’t play his song right now because right now, his song makes me sad:
If you get sad, we’ll hug you in a circle.
Here’s what my daughter said when I asked her to stop asking me why I don’t go to dance lessons anymore:
You stopped spinning in circles when you stopped going to dance lessons. You were happier when you were spinning in circles.
Yeah. . . I was.
For weeks, I’ve been a wreck. Like, irrationally so. I cry at approximately 72% of all songs on the radio. I have been 84% ineffective at my job. I have been 98% worthless at working out. I have zero motivation to do anything productive or helpful. Where I typically feel compelled to fix things, I now roll my eyes and walk away. I am not a pleasant person right now. At all. And, I know it.
Two months ago, I was the polar opposite. I was singing and dancing and loving life more than is really reasonable. My face hurt from smiling and I had to force myself not to skip through my office in glee. I was loving every second of every day of my life and it was probably very, very annoying.
I’d never really given much thought to the intensity of my emotions. Ever. In my life. Until it was brought to my attention last week by a good friend who started the conversation with, “I’m saying this as a friend, and you can tell me to fuck off if you want and that’s fine”. Seriously, anytime you give me permission to tell you to fuck off, we’re probably in pretty good shape.
It turns out, I emote intensely. When I’m happy, I’m really fucking happy. When I’m sad, I’m really fucking sad. When I’m mad. . . well, God help anyone who gets in my way.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this information.
What I do know is that I process a lot of those intense emotions by writing, and that’s something I haven’t been doing any of lately. So . . . that being said, I’m back, and I’m all intense and shit. . . so this ought to be fun. Whee!
