Embracing My Emotional Reactions

I laugh when I’m ner­vous. Especially around girls I’m attract­ed to — total gig­gle­fest. I also laugh uncon­trol­lably around peo­ple I meet for the first time. People low­er their guard when there’s laugh­ter, and I sus­pect my mind sub­con­scious­ly finds humour in every­thing to put peo­ple at ease around me.

Around peo­ple I hate, I’m dead silent. That’s how you know I don’t like you: if I don’t talk. The mere pres­ence of one of these peo­ple forces me to ful­ly con­cen­trate on not drilling a 4‑inch hole in my tem­ple with a cord­less DeWalt.

Pat’s dif­fer­ent. He told me once that if you ever see him shake his head and shrug his shoul­ders, you’re in his black­list. In an act of faith, he’ll give every­one respect and will even go so far as to stab you in the front, but he gives up if you cross his line of ethics. He’ll nev­er be involved with any­thing relat­ed to you after that. It’s not that he hates these peo­ple, like me, he los­es all inter­est. This is prob­a­bly even worse than my reac­tion which, because his is cold. You mean noth­ing to him. I try to let go as well, but I can’t. In the back of my head I cling to the hope that these peo­ple can change. Sometimes I also won­der if these peo­ple ever lis­ten to them­selves and can under­stand exact­ly why I hate them, because it’s so obvi­ous to me.

I also cry in emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions. It does­n’t have to be any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly sad or hap­py, just a time when emo­tions are high. Intense sports games, Tim Horton’s com­mer­cials, some­times just because some­one else is cry­ing. I can hide it pret­ty well though; peo­ple don’t under­stand if you start cry­ing in a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous sit­u­a­tion.

As frus­trat­ing as these emo­tion­al reac­tions can be, I know they make me who I am.

I used to try des­per­ate­ly to remain cere­bral and log­i­cal — like Pat — but my emo­tions would always get the bet­ter of me. Now I’ve learned to embrace them. I could only do this after accept­ing myself and becom­ing con­tent with who I am. They give me some­thing Pat does­n’t have: intense inspi­ra­tion. That rush, when your stom­ach churns, when your head is burns, when you heart flut­ters.

They’re a part of me, and they make me who I am.

5 comments

  1. You may not real­ize how attrac­tive all that is to those of us of the oth­er gen­der who need “high­ly evolved” males in our lives.… those things all rate very high to me, and always have. Your tri­als have served you well and made you more valu­able.

    You’re lucky that you can veil cer­tain of them — I’ve no pok­er face at all. When I’m peev­ed with some­one, only a com­plete moron would not guess…

    I had a guy who gig­gled with ner­vous­ness over me before.… it was real­ly flat­ter­ing, com­ing from him, and fun­ny and endear­ing. Put it to excel­lent use!

  2. It’s good to reflect and dis­sect these things, and dia­logue them I them. Laughing on a sub­con­scious lev­el to put peo­ple at ease makes sense.

    I laugh when I’m embar­rassed or get­ting real­ly ticked off, threat­ened and/or over­tired, close to an absolute no to soft­en myself and the oth­er, deesca­late. It over­shoots some­times and gives oppo­site sig­nals. I also laugh, whad­dya know, when I’m light­heart­ed.

    I tend to clam up around peo­ple I am fond­est of and am free-tongued around peo­ple who I’ve built less attach­ment to because no invest­ment to lose I fig­ure. I tend to nev­er want any­one to be dead to me. I over­in­tel­lec­tu­al­ize, most pas­sive, most imper­son­al, most lati­nate and quot­ing, when some­thing is clos­est to my heart, prob­a­bly to get away to a com­fort­able dis­tance.

  3. @xibee — Hahahah…I would­n’t say “high­ly evolved”. Maybe “in-tune with myself”.

    My reac­tions are rather trans­par­ent to some actu­al­ly. Some of those I hate can tell because I’m com­plete­ly mute around them but ani­mat­ed and excit­ed around peo­ple I like. Pat tells me I’m hard to read though, just because I don’t fit into the cook­ie-cut­ter char­ac­ters of any “nor­mal” peo­ple.

    I don’t think girls get flat­tered by my laugh­ter either. They just think I’m an idiot.

    @Pearl — Laughing when you’re get­ting ticked off or threat­ened is great. I wish I had such an abil­i­ty. It’s total­ly under­stand­able how some­thing like that gets mis­in­ter­pret­ed though.

    You’re com­plete­ly oppo­site of me when it comes to being free-tongued around peo­ple I’m fond of. It’s because these peo­ple are usu­al­ly fond of me as well, and would accept me no mat­ter what came out of my mouth. How pow­er­ful it must be to not care what oth­ers think and be able to speak your mind; I’m con­stant­ly bit­ing my tongue to be diplo­mat­ic, because of mutu­al friends.

  4. I for­got to tell you, if you see me eat­ing some­thing while shak­ing my head then I’m real­ly enjoy­ing the food item I’m eat­ing. I think I shake my head in this case because I can’t fig­ure out why the object I’m eat­ing is so good, so my brain dis­ap­proves the fact that I can’t fig­ure things out.

    I find peo­ple who dis­cov­er and accept them­selves for who they are live a more ful­fill­ing life, prob­a­bly because they know what they want.

    One day I hope to feel an intense emo­tion that will draw tears to my eyes, but at the rate I’m going, you can call me Robocop.

  5. Hahahah…You know, I would think that you would shake your head because any oth­er time you’d have it would­n’t taste as good. It makes per­fect sense to me.

    Maybe there will be a movie that will draw you in and speak to you enough to make you cry. That’s the only thing I can think of that could make you emo­tion­al enough. Not death or love or any­thing like that, but art.

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