Wearing Pants

I was having a bit of an emotional melt down the other day. My melt downs tend to catch me by surprise. I will convince myself I am doing fine until it all explodes in some sort of knee-jerk spontaneous compulsive action. Like emotional eating, emotional drinking, emotional spending, emotional napping, emotional yelling... you get the picture.

Fortunately on said emotional melt down, I sensed it coming a bit early and tried to give my close friends a call before any emotional explosion could make it worse. Jenny was at class. Kayla didn't pick up. My mom was at her volunteer position... and it just kept going like that. So what did I do? I took advantage of having an excuse for a meltdown and headed to the store to pick up some of my favorite emotional foods. On my drive home, the privacy I needed to indulge in my impulse, the phone rang. Crap! I've been caught.

To pick up or to silence? I look at the caller ID: Kayla. Kayla will understand. Heck, she'll probably join in with me! I pick up. Before she can speak, I confess, “I'm eating bad things...”

“I'm too late?” She asks.

“Yes.”

“I'm on my way.”

Kayla, friend since third grade, best since ninth, was coming to the rescue. She kept me on the phone (aka, unable to practice my intended gluttony) until she got to my house. With arms open and ready for hugging she rushed upstairs to where I was sitting. After initial hugs, we took a step back. She looks down and congratulates me with an, “Oh! At least you have pants on!”


First, it got me laughing. Which was good. Secondly- it reminded me that things are not as bad as my emotions make them out to be. I was fully dressed, even in what I will dare call an “outfit”- which is new for a re-urbanizing girl like me. Things could be worse. I could be completely unemployed. I could not have a place to live. I could not have an “outfit” to put on. Suddenly I felt like a selfish dirt bag.

And with that I registered with a volunteer database website, called up my grandma to see if I could clean her bathroom, and did the dishes from my roommate's baking endeavor.

All I needed was to step outside of myself, my selfish ambitions, and my emotions were put in their place. How often are we upset, angered, or even to the point of a meltdown over “problems” that others would feel blessed to have? My friend who's planning a wedding has many complaints about budgeting, and I would love to just have a wedding to be unable to afford. Not that problems aren't problems, but perhaps if we put them in their place in the grand scheme of the world, they wouldn't cause us so much grief.