Losing My Shit
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I woke up in the foulest of moods this morning. My alarm went off but the walls of my bedroom were only illuminated by darkness. I looked outside and the sun wasn’t up yet. I was immediately annoyed by the changing seasons and the archaic notion of Daylight Savings. I pulled up to work and saw cars scattered across the parking lot. This meant I was going to have to conduct some version of customer service first thing in the morning. My first guest of the day sat at the very end of the bar, sipping iced tea, within direct line of sight of my morning makeup routine, a major inconvenience as I refuse to get ready on my own time. Five minutes into my shift my boss showed up, then my other boss in rapid succession, ensuring that I couldn’t piss off the first two hours of my day (blogging). I fumed, ready to throw the whole fucking day away at the burden of pretending to work. Some liquor rep arrived and began tinkering through my bottled beers, clinking glass ever so softly and driving me absolutely fucking insane. I saw a suspicious looking woman sitting in her car in the parking lot so I decided to stalk her through the dining room window for 20 minutes, judging her striped sweater and curb worn rims as I slurped the whipped cream off my pumpkin spice latte.
Recently I’ve been working on a mental health piece, a testament to the emotional strides I’ve been making since choosing to go on medication. I was going to talk about how much more leveled I feel, how much better I’m able to control my temperament, how clearly I can decode my emotional ailments, a real laundry list of progress. But today I woke up like this, seething just below the surface, daring any 20 something to come in and ask about microbrews or a couple of old ladies on a white wine spritzer bender. I fucking dare ‘em! And so I’ve decided to shelve the positive shit for today and let my loco flag fly for this one.
The real question here is why. What’s changed? How does someone make so much emotional progress and then wake up a full fledged psychopath on a crisp October morning? Why, today of all days, do I feel like putting my hand through someone’s face for breathing too loudly or asking for wet wipes? I guess it all started with that time I almost liked someone. Yes, I had a little bit of summer lovin’, a chance meeting with a “nice” guy. We shared some laughs and a few heartfelt emotions then he was gone. Just like that, a ghost. Well, if ghosts continually watch your Instagram story but make no effort to contact you directly. As quickly as it started it was over. I wanted to cry, to know why, what had I done, what was wrong with me. Maybe I could’ve reached out yet again after so many failed attempts to resurrect our connection but why? Why called him again? To check the temperature to see if he’s still an asshole? Usually I would have jumped head first into a pity spiral, obsessing over every word and gesture, trying to decode them like an emotional Rubik’s Cube. However, the new (and fully medicated) me doesn’t grovel or embarass myself with petty shit so instead of searching for meaning in a thousand tiny gestures or pining away for answers that would never come, I took it at face value and let the silence speak for itself. If he wanted to, he would and he didn’t, so he doesn’t. Simple as that.
Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy. There was something there and letting it go was hard for me. A week passed and I still thought he’d emerge. Week two was harder with still no contact. After a month it was clear that he’d disappeared from my life completely. The second month I blocked him so I wouldn’t keep looking for a text message that would never come. Eventually I moved on. I fell out of the habit of late night talks and private jokes. I stopped looking at him as my favorite person. His disappearance stripped away everything that made him special and, one day, he was just another guy who’d disappointed me. Cest la vie.
Then, as if by magic, two days into a busy work weekend, I get a DM on Instagram. Had there been a disturbance in the force, a tiny imperceptible shift in the lining of the universe that indicated that I was finally good again? There was a moment of confusion and then wonder because I’d truly written him off in my mind as one of the lost boys. But nothing could prepare me for the content of that message. As if no offense had been given, no time had passed at all, a playful jest followed by a funny meme. I was stunned. I expected some form of real communication but why, I don’t know. Perhaps after so much time had passed one would lead with an apology, an explanation, even a modicum amount of accountability for their actions, but sadly, there was none. No check in on how I’m feeling, where I am in life, or if I even wanted to rehash this shit. He slid right back in that cracked door like nothing had ever happened. That’s when I realized that the guy I liked so much, the one who was attentive, considerate, and kind, who I could trust and talk to, never existed. He didn’t ghost me because he never was. THIS GUY ghosted me, the selfish, self centered, avoidant who would rather disappear than have a simple converstaion about expectations and boundaries. This is the guy who literally fell off the fucking Earth one day because he just felt like it.
So today, physically in October but emotionally right back to the heartbreak that August brought me, I woke up mad at the fucking world, emotionally charged like a little psycho Tesla plugged in all night. Why show up now that that gaping hole of disappointment had finally began to scar over and close up, almost completely healed months later? Why rip that scab off, discarding all the personal growth and progress, and rip that wound open again, a new, fresh, and even more complicated one for me to tend to. Why disturb my peace with hollow words and selfish actions? Because he was never THAT GUY that I built him up to be. He might have felt that way when he touched me, might have seemed that way when he looked at me, might have sounded that way when he spoke to me, but his actions indicate otherwise. So today I’m mad at the whole fucking world because I have to grieve the loss of a person that never existed, again.
I guess the point of today’s story is pretty simple. No matter how much medication you take, no matter how much yoga you partake in, you can’t namaste the crazy out of yourself but you can limit the people who bring it out in you. You can demand to be treated with respect and care by those who want to be near you. You can tell people how they make you feel and hold them accountable for it. You can cut off access when it causes you distress. You can do whatever you need to to protect the you that you’re becoming. And sometimes it’s ok if you lose your shit. Just a little bit.