Those days when a lack of sleep and nutrition seem to consume your life… when a simple disappointment occurs as one of the worst things in the world. Tears stream down your face, a whole box of tissues could be dispensed by your nose, and you just want to collapse to the floor and stamp your feet furiously and fervently. Sometimes those days do happen. Sometimes those days are today.
One of the best parts about having those days, I just noticed, though, is learning how to be okay with them – being able to be with people and share with them in the middle of it all. If I can be clear that the unrealistic physical responses are just physical responses, and be okay with the fact that some people might not understand, while others will understand perfectly when I share with them about it, then the whole experience alters itself.
As I stood there just now, balling, I said, “I am rather exhausted right now, so my emotional responses are quite exaggerated and somewhat uncontrolled. Yes, I know what just happened sucks, but there is no need for me to have such an extreme emotional and physical response as I am right now.” I no longer felt embarrassed about the public display of red-eyed rain (and over a ‘nothing’ sort of problem). It’s almost a similar experience to having sneezed or shivered – it was suddenly just a bodily response, as opposed to a meaning-filled event, where clearly something is terribly wrong (or else just wrong with me).
So from now on, when it inevitably happens that I do not get enough sleep in life (because we can be real here), and my emotions seem to be on sadness steroids, rather than growing more upset at not being able to ‘manage myself’ and being embarrassed about crying over nothing in front of people I may or may not know too well, I can be at ease. Rather than wanting to cry more over the fact that I am crying, I can just breathe and communicate. I will be, almost instantly, just a girl again, instead of that poor, crying girl.
And that sounds loads better than the alternative. ;P
hannah ananas 