When things go horribly wrong, and someone who is important in my life is upset with me, or we’re arguing or disagreeing about an issue, depending on how much I care about that person, I am prone to falling into what I can only call an altered state of email dependency.
What this entails is me hitting the F9 key in Outlook repeatedly checking for new mail every 60-90 seconds. Looking, praying, and hoping for an a reply to my last email. You know the email I’m waiting for, the one that says that everything is ok, that the person doesn’t hate me, doesn’t think that I’m crazy, stupid or worthless. The email that says that it’s okay that we disagree, and everything is going to be okay, that this too shall pass and I needn’t feel as though my world has ended.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I have to really care about or love the person with whom I’m at odds to fall into this state of being. Which is good. Because love. But which is also bad because extreme emotional anguish that may only be relieved by someone else and it really sucks to feel as though I am neither allowed nor able to decide to just be okay again and make my world right again. After all, I am able to make my children’s worlds right all the time but am powerless over my own? Why is that?
And yes, I know that I sound somewhat (??) unhinged. I am working so hard on me and my efforts to be real with myself and others. Learning to be honest and true about my thoughts, feelings, and actions. To stop saying yes when I want to say no. To stop eating shit politely with a knife and fork and smiling whenever I feel like someone is being unkind to me. To stop reacting emotionally to insults or verbal digs (real or perceived) and rather begin to refuse to be diminished into a state of tears and abject sadness as my tears only serve to expose me to further ridicule and disdain.
I have a long way to go on that one.
So, in the meantime, I hit F9 – get up, tidy up a few things, hang out with my kids, prepare a snack for someone and make my way back to my open laptop. Switch the screen over to Outlook and jab at the F9 key again and wait while the program goes through the motions of receiving (or not receiving) email. And more often than not, I go through all of those steps again. And again. And again.
Except this time, I decided to write this post instead, hoping against hope that getting it out ‘there’ will help me to break this cycle and do something different. Something better. Something healthier.
So, here I am. Waiting, wanting, hoping, talking myself off the verge of tears, holding myself together and trying to convince myself that the lack of communication does not mean that I’m nothing to this very important (to me) person in particular and the world in general.
It just means that the internet is broken again.
Damn that Kardashian/Jenner family and their internet-breaking ways.
