Embrace Your Crazy.

I've posted on this before, my fear of being emotional or girly in "My Gender Bothers Me, or Yes I'm Messed Up". Sometimes I feel like I should print out that post and send it to all potentials: Listen boys and girls, make me feel and I will have a rage for you which you will not understand. Actually treat me badly and make me feel and a fury you thought died in biblical times shall reign down upon you. (Most likely in email format.)

I am emotional.

I have hated that fact for almost as long as I can remember. I say almost because I can remember a time when I wasn't ashamed to cry in public, or have feelings in general... I hurt my arm when I was about 6 years old. I ran to the church across the street with tears streaming down my dirty face, where my parents were lunching, where sympathy would most likely be found. Instead, my father told me rather sternly, "That's enough." For a week, I was told to stop being so dramatic about my arm, to stop crying about the pain. Finally, after my school teacher wearied of consoling me, I was taken to the hospital and officially declared broken by non-dramatic experts. It was now okay to cry, apparently. But only a little.

My father, of course, apologizes frequently for this, and especially lately as I suffer through feeling. The arm healed, but I still hate myself for feeling so emotional about experiences that my rational self declares trivial. I hate crying when I am in physical pain--it's gone so far that now I either hysterically laugh or angrily curse when I am in extreme pain. But I will not cry. And any time I do succumb to emotion, it feels as though my brain cleaves into two selves; Thinky Self hates Feely Self for being so fucking dramatic about everything, which makes Feely Self ashamed and even more emotional of course. And now all of us just feel outright crazy because I've officially given names to two personalities in my head. But I digress.

My absolute greatest fear in life is to break down in front of people. I can't remember a time I had a face-to-face screaming match with someone, or let the tears flow in front of the person who opened the floodgates. When I am upset, I become outwardly ice-cold while the emotions begin to boil inside. Only my eyes flash what's seething beneath. I leave the situation as quickly as possible. The only form of communication I allow myself with people when I am upset is the most impersonal of all: email. I will write to tell them I am hurt or upset or angry, but I will not let them see me in that state. Letting Times New Roman convey my message with proper grammar and complete sentences gives me some sense of safety--safety against others viewing me as an overly emotional, dramatic, weak GIRL. Safety against others seeing Feely Self. I realized that except for two individuals in my life (ironically enough, one being my father), I am actually unable to cry in front of others. My voice may tremble, but I cannot even force tears out (I tried both times I was pulled over for speeding).

But I'm beginning to see the problem with this strategy: Others know Feely Self is in there, but they don't know how big or terrible she is...They know there's a monster lurking in the water, but having only seen its tail as it retreats, they cannot gauge its true size. Every boy or girl who has broken up with me (with the exception of "Sebastian") has told me the same thing: "I'm terrified of dating you." Sure, they all choose their own special word combination, but it's the same cryptic message. What a relief it would be to hear "I'm just not attracted to you in that way", or "This just isn't working out" or even "I got someone else pregnant." And the breakup speech always contains the "I like you so much" and "you're so amazing" phrases for added frustration and consternation.

I have a hard time believing that I am *just. that. awesome.* I'm starting to wonder if perhaps some of my intensity peaks out, and my attempts to stifle this intensity make it appear all the more menacing. It does feel menacing to me--even though my emotions are rarely inappropriate, I just feel the intensity of those emotions is outright crazy.

It's time to embrace my crazy, folks. I am not a robot. I am not even a moderately emotional person. I am an extremely intense, highly emotional and sometimes jealous individual. I am passionate about almost everything. I am lukewarm about almost nothing. I will still use Thinky Self to make sense of things, but I need to let Feely Self socialize a bit more. After living with Real Crazy for eighteen years, I suppose I doubted anyone would want to be with an emotional person. But I don't think I've been fooling anyone, I've just been scaring the hell out of everyone. I'm not my mother, I'm not Real Crazy, my rational self does not turn off when the emotions turn on, but I do feel everything much more intensely than most. And my selves are trying to be okay with that...

I'm embracing my own crazy.