hello,
it is me: the president of The Bottling-It-Up Club, and i absolutely hate it here.
recently, my very sweet friends told me that i have an annoying habit of bottling things up and bringing them up much later. while that is partially true, i don’t think i’d consider it a problem entirely. communicating with someone isn’t just about articulating your feelings and blurting them out. it has a lot to do with 1) the degree of hurt 2) how you imagine the other person would react based on past incidents and 3) how much space you’re being allowed to truly voice yourself once you’ve opened up.
now, i don’t consider this to be a unique reaction. tons of people, when upset, prefer to bottle it up than pull out a sword and confront. and i just want to say that i totally get it. confrontation sucks and unless you’re hundred percent secure in the friendship, i wouldn’t recommend it.
so while that bottling up is fine, to a certain extent, there’s another kind (that i do) that is not.
you see, when the going gets tough, i get awfully quiet. i lose the ability articulate. i forget i can use words to express how i am feeling. when asked, “how are you doing?”, my mind actually blanks out. i mumble words that make no sense, and i hurriedly move on to the next topic. weird.
what happens next? the ultimate breakdown of course i.e. lots of tears and howling and (sometimes screaming) and then regretting letting it get to this point because suddenly my entire face hurts like i just got bad plastic surgery done.
anyway, on that note, i decided to jot down my top 10 worst breakdowns ever. in no order.
some of these were situational, but most of them were a result of a lot of pent up emotions forcing themselves out of my tear ducts.
the time i sat alone in my room and cried for 5 hours straight for no particular reason. at one point, i was so desperate to calm down that i had to listen to david attenborough’s soothing voice for 45 minutes. when i finally paused the video, assuming i was in control, i began bawling again.
the first time i watched Darr starring Shah Rukh Khan, i had a full crying sesh in my mother’s lap after i finished the film. till date, i claim it was because of SRK’s character’s death at the end, but i know it was more than that.
the time i moved away for college and spent a significant part of my first evening in my hostel room (all alone) just crying and staring at my phone as my ex (who i had just broken up with) frantically called and texted to make me reconsider my decision.
i was always the Good Kid in school, so you have to understand the panic i felt when i got a call from my school saying my parents would have to meet the Principal because of some harmless mischief i’d done. i just sat alone in my living room and slowly cried for two hours (till 5 pm) until my mom finally came home. when i told her, she slapped me and i cried more. fun times.
deeply mortified about the time i started bawling my eyes out at a college party because i got too drunk and couldn’t get a grip on my emotions. my (drunk) friends had to comfort me endlessly that night as i threw up and cried in their laps.
the time my (drunk) parents started fighting and somehow that led to me (also drunk) crying and yelling because i was sick of them crying and yelling. i screamed a lot, went to my room, locked it, called up a friend, and cried my eyes out until i physically had no tears left in me.
the night before my early-morning graduation, at around 4 am, i started weeping so uncontrollably that my friends had to come in and console me. in the end, all of us attended the graduation ceremony in a half-conscious state because we hadn’t slept all night. it was horrible. not the kind of graduation you want, trust me.
when i was younger, around 10-12 years old, my mother got a job that kept her out of the house at odd hours. she would leave in the afternoon, just before i returned from school, and come home late at night, after i’d fallen asleep. it was very upsetting for me because i was, and still am, deeply attached to her. i kept quiet until, one night, i couldn’t. and then silently wept through the night and went to school next day with swollen eyes.
college was a bad time for my anxiety. not like now is a good time but those were definitely my worst years. i remember this one afternoon, i was surfing the internet, working on an assignment, when i suddenly started crying. for no reason. i just kept crying for what felt like eternity until i finally passed out.
when i say i was the Good Kid, i really, really mean it: this one time, i felt like i screwed up an exam so i sat under a bench and cried on the phone to my mom for 20 minutes (i was so worried someone would spot me!) until she convinced me to go to my room and sleep. later in the evening, i went out for dinner with my friends but never mentioned the breakdown bit to them. when the results came out, turns out i’d scored over 90%. LOL. i’m a joke.
in conclusion: i have the loveliest friends and family who deserve better than this (i love you guys).