Word Vomit

Something I work on, almost all the time, is expressing my feelings right away when something bothers me, instead of waiting and waiting until I eventually explode. It's a work in progress, but when I look over the past three to five years of my life, it has gotten so, so much better. 

My natural response to someone hurting me, is to not say anything, to try and let it wash under the bridge. I say I'm fine, and it's okay a lot when someone says something that I find hurtful. I am also likely to make a snarky comment back, where maybe I could be joking, or maybe I could be telling you how upset I am. (I blame that on the Whitmore in me - no feelings, no expression of pain.)

And then I snap.

One little thing, one small comment, something that isn't really that big of a deal, will be the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, and I will unload on someone, in a way that seems like an overreaction. And probably because to that one, isolated comment, I am overreacting. But for me, I am reacting to not only what just happened, but to the history of things that have bothered or upset me, the ones I tried to ignore and never said anything about.

Cue the word vomit. If there were any question about how upset I am now, or how upset I have been, based on what you've done to hurt me, it is no longer a question. Word vomit always eloquently drives my point home. You hurt me, and I am mad about it now. Word vomit is aggressive, and can be incredibly mean. But while it's happening, I don't even feel bad. Because you are the one who hurt me over and over and over, and I just happen to finally be expressing it. Healthy? No, probably not.

Like I said, this is all the Whitmore in me. Rage. It's how we display all of our emotions, really. We don't get sad, we get mad. We don't talk, we yell. We don't communicate, we talk shit. And we don't admit weakness, including admitting to someone that we are hurt by whatever they just said or did. This inability to express healthy emotions has caused irreparable rifts in my family, and has caused fight after fight, to no end. It's a lovely personality trait passed down through several generations. Be jealous. It's awesome.

Also as I said, this is something I work on, almost constantly. When someone hurts me, I often find myself saying I'm fine, and then saying, actually no I'm not. I try hard to not be the emotional basket case that I am genetically, and to insert some logic into my own emotional responses. But there are times that I don't catch it, and I let myself be hurt for a long time, and I continue to not see it happening until the day I snap. Until I am spewing word vomit all over the place. And until I'm done, and suddenly I feel so much better, so relieved, to have finally expressed my feelings.

My inability to properly express myself like a normal human is no one else's fault. I mean, I can thank whatever chromosome makes you a genetically crazy bitch, because I was born with it, but in general, my emotions are my own responsibility. And I need to keep them in check. I need to continue to focus on expressing my feelings as they happen, not months later when all I can see is red.

So the next time I say to you, hey that really bothers me that you said that, know that I am outside of my comfort zone, really focused on my boundaries, and trying my hardest to not sweep a raw emotion under the rug. Be proud of me that I didn't just wait six months for you to make a dumb ass statement and then knock you the fuck out.

Because nobody benefits from word vomit.