For anyone that knows me, even just a little bit, they know that my life has been ruled by emotion and completely illogical, random, spontaneous and, at times, destructive decisions. At 37 years old I would have thought that things would be a lot different, yet I find that I can compare it to an 18 year old who does not seem to have a clue. The difference being I have a long list of mistakes, that I should have learned from over the years, and perhaps I have, though I would be hard pressed to actually put my finger on anything too specific. Growing up in a military family had many advantages as well as disadvantages. The constant moving around, for myself at least, pushed me further and further into a shell that still to this day haunts me. Over the years that shell proved to be my only friend that I knew that I would never be forced to say goodbye to, unfortunately it has also proven to be an obstacle in trying to relate to the world outside of that shell. For many years as a child and teenager my emotion took the form of anger and basically showing my ass. After I graduated from high school I began working with children at the Youth Center on NAS Keflavik and started to see a lot of myself in many of the kids that I was working with. Although I had no actual training to work kids, what I did have proved to be more help than any training could have given me. I had already grown up as a military brat and knew what they were feeling and the things that they were going through. I found myself gravitating to the kids that seemed to have behaviour problems, discipline problems, those that seemed to just be kinda lost. I became very close with a handful of these kids and their families and acted like a big brother of sorts for many of them, while still being able to be their friend. I worked there for a little over a year before my dad was stationed back in the states and I had to leave. On my last day of work at the Youth Center one for the boys that seemed to always be in my office in trouble came up to me and said he wanted to talk to me. In my mind I was thinking that this was it, this kid was going to let it all out and tell me exactly what he thought of me. As much as I tried to be a friend, I was still the assistant director and more often than sometimes, I was forced to be that bad guy at work. I was ready to let this kid say or do whatever he wanted, if for no other reason than to let him get it out of his system. We sat down in the main room of the center and what happened next completely caught me off guard and changed me in a huge way on an emotional level. This sixth grade boy, that spent more time in my office than most of the other kids told me that he was sorry for all the trouble that he had caused me. He told me that although he would get mad at me for various reasons, he knew that everything that I had done was only to try and help him. He told me that he was going to really miss me and he thanked me for everything that I had done for him and then he just started to bawl his eyes out and put his arms around me. At that point another of the kids was walking through the main room on their way to the bathroom and saw what was going on and also started to cry at the thought of me leaving. It was not too long before about half of the 100+ kids ended up coming out to see what the noise was all about and it was just one big emotional moment. At that time I learned that, although I grew up thinking that boys do not cry, they hold their emotions inside, that crying was ok and letting your emotion out was a good thing. I tell this story because it changed my life in a big way and I believe that it changed the lives of many kids that day that perhaps had grown up thinking the same way I had. I do hope that these kids learned a much better way to balance that emotion with logical thinking than I have over the years. Looking back I find that I have apologized many times for my emotional outbursts only to find that instead of apologizing for anything of the sort, I only need to find that balance. There are times I wish I could be nothing more than just a bitter old queen because it seems, at that particular moment, that it would be easier to not have the emotion that may be consuming me. Of course those moments of bitter envy rarely last more than 24 hours if that long and I find myself grateful for the emotion because it reminds me that I care. Emotion and caring in and of itself is not so much of a problem, but add to it, over analyzing a situation to the point that it brings to mind things that may not even be there and all hell can break loose. The utter turmoil between that which is logical and that which is emotional, again I can only speak for myself, needs a constant mediator to manage the particular situation. In the past when this turmoil has proven to be too much to handle I have turned to various destructive ways of handling it, and in the past all I have been able to gain from taking those routes is nothing more than temporary numbness. Last night I once again thought along those same lines as I got pretty drunk, though nothing compared to my drunken days of the past. Last nights venture only served to guarantee that I woke up with a massive headache and the guilt of not handling my emotion in a logical way. Instead though of spending today getting down on myself for being dumb about last night, I have decided to figure what I may have learned from it. I chose to use my mind over my emotion.
The shell that I have lived in for so long really has no place in my life anymore. I have spent all these years in this shell, never reaching out in a positive way, meaning that I have refused to admit the need for closeness from people around me. Sitting in the bar last night all alone was quite depressing while I watched various groups of friends interacting with each other. I really have no desire to get into the bar scene again, yet I know that I need to reach out in some way to meet people and make new friends. There are support groups out there for everything on the face of the earth, but what could be more supportive than a group of friends just hanging out and
spending time together. I have realized that I can not so it all by myself, despite many years of trying to do so. I can not be with the one I love right now, though we are both working towards that goal. I am realizing that it is ok for him to have people close to him and that I need to have people close to me. This battle of My Mind over My Emotion is not going to end anytime soon, I do hope however that I will continue to learn how to balance out the two of them in a way that will strengthen me versus bring me down. Despite the occasional desire to be an uncaring bitch, I am grateful for the lesson that I learned so many years ago from those kids. There are times that I have thought that I didn't have emotion anymore, I have realized that there are simply things in life that I don't know how to process, or maybe I am scared to process. We all need therapy of some sort, whether it is professional, talking to your friends or neighbor, or, as in my case for now, this blog. Keeping things bottled up only gives cause to an explosion of some sort in the future, I know this in my mind and try to remember that every day even if it doesn't always work. I recently took a silly quiz on facebook that is supposed to show which side of your brain you use the most, my result was both side equally.....which really explains why I tend to be such a mess I guess!! I just can't make up my mind sometimes and my emotion does it for me. Hell who want to be logical all the time, that would be boring!
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