As One Falls So Do They All….

I am a very cause and effect type person.  It is an easy way to look at the world and be able to control the different things in my life.  If I do something and I get a result I can usually figure out why I got the result I got and then I can change or not change accordingly.  So when something happens that I cannot explain it drives me nuts.  I want to try to understand the why.  I feel a need to understand the why.  I am not sure it is good or bad but it is definitely don’t understand why it happens.

Over the last 3 days I have been slowly getting more and more miserable.  There were a few things that happened, all unintentional on the different people’s fault, but their actions upset me.  I guess upset is not a good word.  Hurt is more like it.  I was a little angry at myself but mostly I was hurt.  I tried to just let the things go.  I tried to not let them bother me, they should have been insignificant and maybe individually they would have been but there just seemed to be little things that kept going coming up all weekend long.  They built on each other and so I didn’t have time to push them away, let them go, or bury them.  Instead they festered and festered until yesterday I was so miserable I couldn’t take it anymore.

I did not really know what to do.  They seemed so stupid to me that I would probably sound like a lunatic if I talked about them.  Or I would get the look of “Really!?!!  That is what is upsetting you?”  I just did not know what to do.  So after a long bout of inner-dialog I decided to talk to my wife about it. Which for me is always very difficult, so this was a big step I guess.  One of the bigger things involved her, but as I said none on their own would probably have phased me, so I was a little nervous.   Actually, I was a lot nervous and wanted to throw-up.  Which was stupid really, but I could not shake those feelings.  So we sat down and I threw it all out there.  I told her how I know they are little things and I don’t know why they bugged me so much.  She listened and only yelled once and it was because I was stupid.  But in the end, I felt so much better.  We did not solve one problem, really because there was nothing to solve, and nothing changed about any of the things that had bugged me, so why did I feel better?

That’s what I don’t get.  I mean I went from being so miserable I would sleep the day away to “Hey, lets go run marathon dressed as a clown happy and energetic.”.  How does me just talking to my wife have such an effect?  It is a baffling mystery to me.  As I was talking to my wife about this disbelief that I can feel so different when she said she should write it down so next time I am back in that place she can pull it out and make me talk.

It doesn’t all add up to me in my head.  I know what all the things were that made me feel that way.   So I know the cause of the feelings I had, but I cannot figure out the cause of them going away.  Just because I told them to her, should not make that big of difference.  I know as I was in individual counseling, I would talk to him about issues and leave there feeling worse than when I went in.  It was draining and felt like stuff was being pulled out of me that really did not want to come out.  Was this any different?  Not really.  She listened and just as he would.  Neither changed anything, neither gave me advice to get better, they both just listened but I got two separate responses.  It is driving me nuts to know why I had the reaction I did.  I would love to replicate it every time I feel down but if I really don’t know what the cause was I cannot do anything.

Maybe this is one of the great mysteries of mankind that never get solved.  It is right up there with parking on driveways and driving on parkways.  My head may blow up trying to figure it out.