The Solitary Act of Coping.

There is a pattern to my emotional coping. It goes like this:

Feel an overwhelming negative emotion. 

Shuts down. 

Stops contact with family and friends.

Removes self from the world.

Brood.

Hypothesize.

Accept.

Starts contact again.

Slowly reemerges back into the world. 

And the cycle continues. 

I'm not the kind of person who, when I'm feeling angry or sad, chooses to share my sadness or anger. I remove myself and I become solitary. I let my mind work out its response to the trigger of my emotions. I let my body come back to its plateau. Because when I feel those emotions the first thing my body does is tense up. I feel the anger radiate through me. Or the sadness squeeze my gut and dry my throat. The sensations take over and all that I am becomes angry or sad. My mind begins to replay the trigger events and I'm stuck in that moment. I can't get away from it. And so if a person were to interact with me all they'd get is the residue of my anger or sorrow. 

That's a lot to put on a person. 

Especially someone who I care about and who did nothing wrong. So I isolate myself until I feel like me again. For a long time I believed this was the way to function. I didn't even bother to look at it from the other standpoint. How can my friends, my family ever claim to know me if they don't really "know" me? Which is to say, how can they get a sense of who I am if every time something affects me negatively, I run away? I'm perfectly ok with seeing my friends angry or sad. In fact I make it my duty to try and help. I am the shoulder to cry on, the calm voice of reason and reassurance. I tell them that I'm there if they need me. And yet I would rather face the unpleasant parts of myself alone than let my loved ones do the same for me. 

I can argue and say that what I do is a sign of love. I'd rather deal with it alone than burden my friends. But what I'm really doing is alienating the people I care about at a time when I may need them the most. What I do is make them feel inadequate, unable to really understand me or my emotions because I am constantly pushing them away. I'm creating a barrier between my friends and myself. However thin that barrier may be, it's there and it affects the way I interact with them and how closely I let them into my lives. What I'm really doing is hiding my vulnerability. I don't want them to see me hurt. I don't want them to witness my rage. So I hide my feelings and ultimately I hide myself from those closest to me. 

This is an act of cowardice, not valor. I'm afraid the people I love won't like what they see. I'm afraid they'll see me at my most fragile moments and abandon me, unable to cope with my emotional state. I don't even take account of the fact that I've seen them in various emotional states and I care about them anyway. I just assume that I'm not good enough to stick around for. 

It's almost silly how the way I deal with other people doesn't seem to qualify for me. It's as if I view myself as a different species, not quite human, not quite important enough to fully love and accept. It's crazy how I push the people I care about away.  But I think just writing about this is a step in the right direction. I've been hiding too long. Posting my little grievances on my social media site is one thing. Letting someone I care about see me when I'm not all together is quite another. But I will do this. Because they trust me enough to let me see their tears. They trust me enough to let me in when they are at their worst. I should do the same. They are worth that much. They are worth so much more.