but we’re never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy…

so i had a little freakout last night. and by that, here’s what i really mean.

i tweaked my left shoulder at some point over the weekend, so it’s been sore right under the shoulder blade. i’ve also been plagued with a sore stomach for a few days, too. (i assume that my weekend of excess – which included nearly 2 bottles of wine and a holy ton of italian food on saturday night before DC mardi gras – is the main trigger there.) i have notoriously bad desk posture when i’m in high research mode, which was how i spent yesterday. so i was kind of a ball of random pains when i left the office last night.

driving home, i kept having increasing twinges in my shoulder, right around the left side of mid-chest. my stomach was all pain-y, and somehow, i got it in my fool head that welp, must be having some kind of cardiac event. yeah, i know, right? hypochondria used to be my racist grandmother’s trip (until she finally got old enough to get legit sickly, that is). but apparently i have hypochondriacal tendencies of my own. so i said, ok self, just call the man. he’s home right now, and he’ll talk you down. except that they were repairing the cell tower on our building yesterday, resulting in service disruptions in our apartments. so he didn’t get the call. i called again. and again. and againandagainANDAGAINANDAGAINGOODGODWHATTHEHELLWHEREISHE?!?!?!?!?

and that, my friends, is how a tweaked shoulder turns into a world-class freakout. he FINALLY got the call and called me back right around the time i hit the hysteria wall. i spent the entire rest of the drive home going through a total and complete freakout meltdown, with the poor man sitting there going, it’s ok, it’s ok, just get home and we’ll figure out what’s going on, you are not dying and neither am i. i love you, and you’re going to be just fine.

and of course, he was right. as soon as i got home and got a big hug, everything was instantly better. my stomach stopped hurting, my shoulder stopped hurting, and my freakout impulse returned to the dark recess of my brain where it lives. but a funny thing happened. not only did i stop feeling bad, i felt measurably better than i had for days. it’s like i had all this pent-up anxious energy running around in me with no outlet, energy i didn’t know was even there. after one really intense tantrum (and my god, was it a good one – haven’t pulled one like that since preschool), i kinda feel like my emotions have reset themselves. almost like a psychic hard freeze and restart.

remember what i was saying the other day about control? about how people who strive so hard to keep it all together might just be covering something? maybe there’s more to it than i thought. a good old fashioned full-throat meltdown, in extreme moderation, may just be necessary to life. get all the bad juju out of the brain, drop all the pretense of ALL IS WELL!, and start over without the burden. i am a full believer in emotional honesty. it’s how i manage my minion and my intern-baby, and it’s how i try to keep myself sane in the presence of the few people on this earth who can be trusted with both barrels of my emotions.

so here’s to the freakout: one more tool in the toolbox of sanity, designed to help me survive by getting just a little crazy…