Getting Emotional

One morning recently, right when I first woke up, I left my bed and stepped into my bathroom. As I did so, my brain, which was barely even awake, connected two things that I hadn’t yet connected consciously: two people in my life and how they responded to me the day before.

You see, something out of my control had happened with my kids and their schools. (Nothing horrific. Nothing major in the scheme of things.) And I got very upset about it.

I was frustrated. I was angry. I felt powerless. And secretly, I felt all these emotions so strongly because I was blaming myself. My emotions toward the school and its rules and so on were so strong because I didn’t want to have to see that underneath it all I believed that I was to blame for all of it.

That last part I only figured out while I was sending my friend rage-y texts about it all. I wasn’t mad at her, and she knew that, but I was definitely emotional.

She listened (via text) and responded. And then a bit later, I felt a bit bad. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset and been so complain-y and rage-y at her. I sent a text saying as much.

A while later, I confided my feelings about my situation to someone else. I sent her a video message and I really let my feelings show. I spewed out a bunch of angry and frustrated thoughts. Again, she knew I wasn’t upset with her. Toward the end of the message I started apologizing, saying, “I know I sound like a jerk right now. I’m sorry for being such a jerk.” Stuff like that.

They both responded with a video message. The first said,

“Vent away. I would be just as frustrated as you are with the whole situation.”

The other said, “I don’t think you sounded like a jerk. You had a lot of reasons to be mad and frustrated.” And then, “You can vent to me anytime though. Like, really, you can. I’m happy to just let you vent if you need to. So don’t feel bad about that.”

And this is what my brain put together first thing this morning: both of the people I shared my feelings with responded in the same (perfect) way.

And it brings up a couple questions for me. Why do I so often think that I need to apologize for being emotional, even with my closest peeps? Why do I apologize when I cry or get angry or frustrated? (I wrote elsewhere years ago about how it’s better to offer gratitude to those who listen or serve than to apologize. Still working on it.)

Do you have people in your life who will say this to you? “Vent away.” “You can vent to me anytime.”

I'm so grateful for those people.

Sometimes, as in this case, the getting emotional made me realize what was really most painful about the situation. It wasn’t the powerlessness. It wasn’t the facts of the situation itself.

It was that deep inside I believed it was all my fault.