Disintegration
I miss wallowing. When I was a teenager and something traumatic was going on for me - whether it was me not making the rifle squad at school or Scott shooting himself before I was able to finish my secret pregnancy, give the baby up for adoption and get back into my cute jeans so I could see him again - I gave myself an outlet for my emotions.
I’d hide in my room with my sister’s boom box and a pile of cassettes and I’d play every sad, miserable, morose song I could find until I cried it out. Chicago’s “Hard Habit to Break” was a good one for almost any occasion as was the entire Cure collection. I would sing and cry and wail and pour my heart out onto the floor of my bedroom until, exhausted, I’d fall asleep right where I was.
And when I woke up, I always felt better.
The thing is, as I got older, I stopped doing that. Actually, it may have happened around the time of the aforementioned adoption. I remember that the day after I signed the papers, I was sitting next to my mom’s bed while she slept and watching the television that was always on in the background. A diaper commercial came on and babies danced across the screen in their little train-covered Pampers and I fell apart … but quietly. I didn’t want to wake her up and when I did and she looked at me to ask, “What are you doing?” my immediate response was, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
Looking back, I don’t even think she noticed that I was crying. Or at least I hope not. Because when I said that I was okay, she said, “Okay, good,” and rolled over and fell back to sleep.
I started to bottle up emotions and shove them down and ignore them, and for the past 20-ish years, it “worked” pretty well. Apparently, I believed that if you simply ate your emotions they would pass through your system and be expelled with the rest of the toxic shit that comes out into the toilet. Well, let me warn you: they don’t.
Now I’ve become this goddamn fountain with a secret switch and I don’t know where it is or how it’s triggered, but when it goes off, all of a sudden I’m that teenager again but sans boom box and cassette tapes. Of course, I get where it comes from and I know - at least I know now - that it’s called “expressing emotions” for a reason. I’ve been through a lot, especially in the last few months, and I’m drained. It makes sense.
But, it also totally sucks that I randomly explode into sobbing fits and there’s nothing I can do but to ride it out and hope that it all ends quickly.
July 21st, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Yeah. I kinda get it…