I can’t find my wallet. This is a very bad thing.

But it gives me an opportunity to explore oneof my biggest problems, and to start it off, let’s examine my potential responses to this situation,which are :

A. Freak out about it, or

B.Ignore the problem..

Note that “calmly look for it like an adult” is not on the list. I really wish it was. I wish I was the kind of person who can keep it together and proceed logically and sensibly in a time like this. The way I will wish I had handled it once the crisis is over.

But that is not in the cards for me.

Another example : I’ve been playing a game called Witcher 2 : Assasins of Kings lately. And yesterday morning, I came very close to quitting the game over napping.

Or the lack thereof.  As patient readers know, I have an absolutely atrocious sense of direction. I could get lost in an elevator. So I really need all the help I can get to find my way around in a video game.

And the next game in the series. Witcher 3 : The Wild Hunt, which I have played to DEATH not once but twice. provided that help.No matter where I was or where I wanted to go, there was a trail of little white dots to follow.

Not so in Witcher 2.  So I was spending a lot of time wandering in circles trying to find shit and getting more and more frustrated.

And not just normal everyday frustration, either. It was the kind I feel in my entire body that blackens my mood and makes me feel like I am inches from losing my mind.

It’s an extremely dangerous frame of mind for me. Not only is it unpleasant to experience, but I feel it’s dangerous to my physical health as well.  I get a weird feeling in my chest and every muscle in my body is clenched.

Not the sort of thing that I want to mess with.

And the worst part is that despite of how awful in feels, it also makes it hard to stop doing the frustrating thing. It’s like my brain is locked in “bloody minded determination” mode to a near psychotic extent.  It takes a serious act of will to yank myself out of that death spiral and return to what passes for sanity.

When I finally did get myself out of that trap, I immediately complained all about it to my buddy Maelkoth and a few other fuzzies and told them I was going to stop playing and got some validation on the whole thing.

Then later, I was sitting at this a-here computer and seriously contemplating quitting the game forever, because who needs that kind of aggravation in their life?

But I decided to give the game one more try, and whaddaya know,. it wasn’t so bad after all.Before long,.I knew my way around well enough to get shit done and I was left wondering what the big deal was.

And it is tempting, in those moments, to think that you should have just kept calm about it in the first place and saved a lot of wear and tear on my amygdila.

But that was never in the cards. I had to have my little crisis of frustration and anxiety before I could calm down enough to really deal with the problem. Until I had my crisis, the emotions were pent up and thus taking up a lot of valuable mental bandwidth just to keep them in check.

Once I got it all out via complaining,.I could calm down and be sane about the whole thing. The dark clouds parted and everything looked better in the light of day.

It would be ignorant of me to wish I could have skipped the actual emotional expression part of it. Ignorant, and inhuman.

Inhuman in that it is the product of a deep and terrible hostility towards emotion that kills by ruthlessly snuffing out absolutely all emotions that might raise my excitation level and therefore wake the sleeping giant of my anxiety.

Why, that might lead to emotions actually being expressed and that is the second worst thing that can happen if your mind is built aroung keeping it all inside.

The worst thing would be if that expression of emotion led to acting irrationally.

In other words, if it led to being merely human.

I have been thinking a lot about how I hold myself to inhuman standards lately. Standards that can’t possibly be adhered to because I am, when all is said and done. just another human being with all the pitfalls and frailties that involves.

Besides, why do I have to be the one who is sane and logical all the time? Why can’t I act out of emotion without the need for any justification like everyone else? What is to special about me that I have to hold myself above all that like I am trying to be some kind of angel of logic and restraint?

Because I know better, I guess.

But if I don’t makemore room for emotion in my mind, I will continue to be squashed flat by my burden of unexpressed emotions and at the mercy of the maelstrom of madness that is my inner life due to all the energy my emotional suppression traps in the weather system of my soul.

As recent events have illustrated, I would be far better off if I just let the emotional crisis happen so that I could get to the part where I am rational sooner.

No, rational is the wrong word for it. Get to the part where I am sane faster. Sane and calm and confident and ready to adapt.

Maybe if I can do that, I will learn to accept that I am merely human and not a robot angel and therefore should not judge myself so harshly all the time.

I am only human. I am only human. I am only human.

Say it three times and it is yours forever.

May I never forget.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.