The day got off to a challenging start. Lab work needing to be done had already thrown my routine off more than a little bit, and that seemed fine and accounted for, but real life is not exclusively dependent on my own lived experience of it. Ever. An absolutely reasonable request by my Traveling Partner (more of a wish or hope than a request, actually) that we find somewhere closer to do this sort of thing added a layer of complexity and an opportunity for miscommunication. That didn’t have to be “a thing”, but eventually became one, simply by being one of many details weighing on me.
I rolled with the changes best I could, and even found myself feeling a moment of real satisfaction and delight with a work call that went exceptionally smoothly with great positive outcomes (happy boss, happy customer, happy me)… then… the “rug pull”.
Look, this is a thing probably everyone experiences now and then, I was riding high on a great feeling, and then, suddenly, that was gone in a moment of… something else much less pleasant or satisfying; my partner’s discontent. It happens. There I was feeling good, and then there he was, not feeling so good himself at all. He shared that experience with me, because as it happened, I was the driver of his poor experience (loud conference calls are annoying to have to overhear, successful or not). My mood was immediately wrecked, not because he did anything “wrong” and not because the moment required it, but just because – no bullshit – I’ve got mental health issues, and one of those is that I struggle to maintain perspective, to refrain from fusing with my partner’s emotional experience, and I take shit personally far far too often. Bouncing back is hard for me (the biochemistry of my emotional experience doesn’t resolve quickly) – thus my rather constant harping on resilience and practices associated with it. I need that practice, badly, and even with all the practicing? My results vary.
After the lab work, and getting my Traveling Partner back home, and doing what I could to set him up for comfort for the day, and getting on the road to head to the office to finish work (because rather stupidly I’d also managed to schedule an afternoon doctor’s appointment on this very same f*ing day, with limited room to maneuver or adapt and basically had to go into the city just to get to that appointment later on) – I finally had a chance to get a cup of coffee. It was almost 11:00 by that point, and I was developing a splitting (caffeine) headache, on top of my usual headache. Fuuuuuuuck. Still, 4 shots of espresso shaken with ice goes a long way toward dealing with a caffeine headache. My blood sugar was dipping by the time I reached the office, and I was a seething mess of vague fury and aggravation that extended well beyond any association with the day’s events thus far. I mostly managed to avoid snarling at any hapless humans to cross my path, and got logged in and head-down in the spreadsheets with a quickness. Maybe that’ll be enough?
…It wasn’t, really…
Breathe. Exhale. Relax. Try to remember this shit isn’t personal, it’s just random human bullshit and temper. Let it go. Let it go. Let. It. Go. It’s hard sometimes. I wanted to enjoy that feeling of pride in my work and that sense of accomplishment, and savor a job well done. I didn’t get to do that, even a little bit, and it was less because my Traveling Partner was irked over my loud talking so much as how much it stung to hear about it right then. Like it or not, generally the things my partner has to say just “hit my consciousness harder” – regardless how meaningful, significant, trivial, urgent, heartfelt, or true (or the opposites of any of those things) they may happen to be. The smallest moment of irritation from him is enough to sadden me for at least a moment, and even more so (and for longer) when it’s legit something I’ve done or not done, or something I’ve fucked up for him. That’s a fucking mess right there, I get it. Not super healthy – but refusing to acknowledge my baggage on this doesn’t let me unpack that baggage. The way out is through. So I put myself through the exercise of reflecting on it, asking some hard questions of myself, and weeding out my bullshit from what matters most.
Once I had a minute to think about things more clearly (after some coffee, after some calories), I realized I could not realistically work efficiently and complete the tasks I had in front of me, and also go to that afternoon appointment that was scheduled for a in-office visit (could have maybe made it work for a virtual appointment). So I canceled and requested a reschedule. I tried like hell to pick a date that wasn’t already scheduled for some other appointment (mine or my Traveling Partner’s), and tried to pick a week that wasn’t so overloaded with obvious meetings and calendared workload that it would be a poor fit in general. Once I’d done so, a lot of the stress was gone (although I also miss doing this appointment, which is already overdue).
…You know what wasn’t gone? My shitty mood. I keep finding myself on the edge of tears, and it’s 100% fragility and bullshit and I’m as annoyed with myself over that as over any other detail of the day so far. I think what gets me most about the “emotional rug-pull” as an experience, is how poorly I’m able to bounce back from one of these, and how fucking common they are for me personally. Like… my implicit sense of things is that “the better I am feeling in a given moment, the more likely an emotional rug-pull from some source will be”. The common factor isn’t at all where that might come from, and 100% is simply “me”. I feel relatively confident that both the high likelihood of an emotional rug-pull developing, and how hard it is to bounce back, are “me things”. This stings. Like, a lot. I mean, on the one hand, if it’s me – surely I can work on that, yeah? …My results vary. I keep practicing practices. I keep working on building emotional resilience – and counting on it. I keep failing in this very specific peculiar way (that is not at all unique to me). Frustrating. I stay angry because I’m angry at myself as much as anything else. Angry that it matters enough to fuck with me like this. Angry that “my results vary” as I work to sort this out, over time. Angry, even, that “people” don’t bother to just reality check the likely outcome of sharing negative feedback with others to maybe, just maybe, avoid wrecking a lovely moment. (Note: that’s definitely too much to ask of human beings generally; we are centered in our own experience much of the time, and how the hell would a person even determine reliably how someone else is feeling without asking first, which would become a completely different conversation?)
A lot of people with trauma histories struggle with the “emotional rug-pull” and with a sense of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” any time things seem to be going well. That’s a thing to work on… it’s not easy, and it takes a ton of practice (and many practices). It gets better. It’s not as bad as it once was (for me), I just still deal with it, and when I do it still reliably sucks, and I definitely don’t like the experience at all, nor do I find any value in it. It’s just a shard of chaos and damage – a metaphorical splinter in my paw that I’d like to figure out how to remove.
I take another breath and refrain from having still more coffee (there’d be comfort in that, but also caffeine, and I’ve had mine for the day). I open a bottle of water. I make an effort to begin again.
Evening Light 