8.23.2007

Emotionally Inept

I've been really emotional lately. I'm not sure when it started and I don't know what triggered it, but it is rearing its ugly head all over my life.

Sometimes it comes in the form of overt sarcasm which I use to mask the fact that I actually CAN feel things, sometimes it comes out while watching a Bob Marley DVD, and sometimes it comes out when I am already in a generally bad mood and someone says something that puts me on the defense.

That last thing is what happened last night. I just snap sometimes and I can go from calm to yelling to crying in, less than 30 seconds. One minute I am laughing and the next I am sitting on the bathroom floor wondering why in hell I can't stop sobbing.

My life has changed so much in the last six months. Things have done a complete 180 and I have been lost somewhere between total happiness and relaxation and total chaos. I have no one to blame and I have no real solutions as to how to deal with the side effects of my up-and-down emotional state.

This rollercoaster tends to make me a little dizzy and push me sometimes right to the edge of sanity. And that's when I need someone to be there just to make sure I don't fall off. The thing is, I don't really like to let anyone that close to me. I don't like for people to witness me at my worst...I don't like them to see weakness. In my family, you either yell or you just bottle shit up. You don't display it. You can be mean and abrasive, but you must never be weak.

I come from a long line of women who are emotionally closed off and, dare I say it, inept. We don't have that thing that binds you to the way that you feel. We can form attachments, but we tend to be the "rocks" of those relationships. We are the women who counsel our friends until 4 in the morning when their boyfriends break up with them. We are the women who seem cold and uncaring when our boyfriends break up with us. We have no attention spans and we need to be in control. We tend to be more emotional about movies than we are about our real lives and we can't explain why we will cry when Julia Roberts doesn't get the guy in "My Best Friend's Wedding" but we can't cry when someone does something hurtful to us.

But then comes that time when we let our guards done just long enough to take offense to a sarcastic comment from someone who we love and trust and then we flip out. We yell and we cry and we feel betrayed. For no reason.

That about sums it up, I am totally emotionally inept.

3 comments:

Mia said...

I think we came from the same family.

I'm absolutely here if you want an impartial ear to purge everything too. At the very least I can attempt to make you smile with my daily antics. I can't promise everday will bring mormons...but I have been known to poison myself accidentally so that could be good entertainment.

For whatever reason, I'm here!

onegirlhere said...

Wow, I feel you. I get told "You never laugh, you never cry."

I thought about it for a while and realised it's true, so I posed myself with the question... how to make myself cry...

Watch a sad movie or even better, read a book. Same goes for laughing.

I'm very much the empathy cryer. I cried for a week when a friend of mine lost a child, meanwhile when my father died, I cried for 2 seconds when I had to read a poem at the funeral, but then of course, a few weeks later I balled my eyes out cause someone made a nasty remark at me.

I partly attribute all of this to being a gemini and an only child...

jules10109 said...

Hey there. :)
My husband is emotionally inept, so I've done some reaserch on his behavior, and came across a few things...Bipolar being one of them. Your high and low mood swings might be due to bipolar disorder...if so, there's good news! You can get medication, or even take natural vitamins to help control those highs and lows that interfear with your life. "St. Johns Wart" is a natural vitamin you can get any where, and they work great for a few people I know. You can see a doctor for a professional opinion. Whatever you do, try not to think of your feelings as being "weak". Sharing our feelings with one another is what makes us stronger and able to grow as a person. If you can't open up with your family, try talking to a friend...you'll be surprised how light oyu feel after. :)
Take care
Jules