It Comes and Goes in Waves.

I tend not to be an openly emotional person, when I’m not spinning and exhausted from the vertigo, that is. I think I’ve written before about how I prefer to be the caregiver not the care receiver, and emotion indicates need, to me. I’m not a stoic, don’t get me wrong, I just prefer not to lose my shit in public. It isn’t that I’m not sensitive, I’m actually quite sensitive, I just don’t like to show it. It’s also because I don’t just cry a few tears to smudge my makeup, when I lose it, I LOSE IT HARD. I ugly cry, and it usually involves waves of sobbing and hyperventilating. Like, it freaks people out. Ergo, do not want. But I’m smart enough to know you can’t stop an avalanche, so I make an extended effort to make sure that when I feel an emotional response welling up that I can find a place where I can hide and do that privately. 

Interestingly, the new meds that I’m on to hold back the vertigo have had a side-effect of managing my moods and emotional responses, and as we’ve slid into May and my son’s graduation from high school, I’ve found that situations that would normally have sent me looking around in a panic for a place to hide and bawl have not bothered me much. Hmm. This is okay. I can work with that. It’s so much better than the crying that came every day with the vertigo earlier in the spring. So, so much better.

Last night was the last high school band concert my oldest son will participate in, and it was fun and bittersweet. And while I managed not to cry without too much effort, I could feel little rumblings of powdery snow shake loose from the snow-packed mountain of my carefully managed emotional stability.

Today, though. Today I didn’t make it. This morning, as happens on many a Thursday morning at the school where I teach, we celebrated a Bar Mitzvah of one of my adorable 7th grade students. And after he read his prayers, the rabbi gave his blessing. And today he really swung for the fences. He spoke of how special this child is, because of his sensitivity, and that in fact, the degree of his sensitivity is his gift, his service, to the world. It was lovely and sweet, and reminded me of my own son. Whoops. 

As I sat in the back listening, I could feel the heavy rumbling, setting off that avalanche as waves of snow started roaring down the mountain. I got up and snuck out the back, and began looking for a place to hide. I wasn’t going to be able to stop it. As it happens, I found my way into the office of our school psychologist, who, bless her heart, “went to a meeting” so I could lose my shit in peace for a few minutes.  

I’m good now. My in-laws arrive tomorrow evening, graduation is on Saturday, Mother’s Day is Sunday. Now that I’ve given myself a chance to let it out, the mountain is safe again.

Onward. 

 

 

Comments

[Adam]

I initially read that last bit as "my lawyers arrive tomorrow"