Grown Ups Doing Emotions

"So then you're sad for awhile."

There's a certain "Duh, honey" tone to Michelle's voice.

We've taken the paddle boat to the other, less populated end of the lake. When we're out of earshot of the cabin we take off our sundresses and stop paddling and spend the next two hours lounging in the sun in our bathing suits (Seriously, 85 degrees in the Upper Midwest over Memorial Day?) talking obsessively about everything from our favorite Game of Thrones characters (Littlefinger, of course) to our love lives (despite being non-existent, mine still requires thorough dissection). It's a long, lovely morning and the start to a long, lovely weekend that I need badly.

As the emotional equivalent to a supernova (or a black hole, I suppose, depending on how you look at it) it's helpful to me to have people in my life who are more, um, regulated. Who don't have huge responses to things. People who don't cry when a book by their favorite author arrives on their doorstep or forget to breathe while watching Hamlet. It's good for me to be around people who are a little less emotionally strung out.

After we discuss the finer points of Littlefinger's endgame, she starts in on a few things I said the night before, drunk on sleep deprivation and meteor showers, but didn't elaborate on. They're the kinds of things I don't want to talk about, but should. Those revelations you have about yourself that hit with tremendous force and leave you stunned an thoroughly disgusted. Those moments when you realize that you don't actually love your partner anymore and are with them because it's easier than being alone or that you're keeping someone around as your fall-back plan or for your next orgasm or emotional whipping boy. Or whatever your particular emotional pitfall is.

Mine has me so ashamed of myself that I don't want to tell Michelle a thing and when the words come out they're halting and physically painful to stay aloud. When I finally get them out, I follow up with the extenuating circumstances, the Things That Made Me Act This Way. They're bullshit, of course, I know what I'm doing and who it may hurt, but I'm doing it regardless, because it Makes Me Feel Better and it Keeps Me From Being Sad. I'm trying to use depression as an excuse for (knowingly!) behaving badly and she's one of the few people who can call me out on it.

She does.

***

Of all things, I'm thinking of 1 Corinthians. 

It's the passage that follows the passage everyone knows from every Catholic wedding ever (Love is patient, love is kind . . .). Shortly after that there's a part of Paul's letter that is slightly less well-known and has been running through my head all weekend: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." 

Oddly, the reason that it's on my mind has nothing to do with scripture or theology, but because over the weekend I read Lev Grossman's The Magicians. 

Called "Harry Potter for grown-ups" (a label that seems to be stuck on every fantasy novel that had the misfortune to be published after Harry Potter) it's an interesting, if slightly maddening book. The plot is a little wonky here and there (I get fussy about the rules of fantasy universes being established early in the book and followed throughout it) and there are moments where the editor should have excised whole paragraphs, but it's a book that triumphed despite itself. 

The reason I liked it so much was because it dealt with the idea of getting your childhood fantasy fulfilled as an adult. Stop for a moment and think about what that would mean. Always wanted to go to Narnia? Poof. There. Been waiting for your telekinetic powers to manifest themselves? Bang. Wake up one morning and turn on the shower with your brain. You get bitten by a radioactive spider, find yourself smack in the middle of Diagon Alley, wake up with a harp in your hands in Rivendale. 

The question the book raises is whether or not it's good for us to want those things as adults, if it's not better to exist in the mundane world and struggle through the small trials and tribulations we have here. Sure, we'll never save Middle Earth from immanent peril, but if we continue to pursue childish fantasies as adults, we'll undoubtedly meet a messy, unfortunate end. Maybe.

That question, so central to the book, is the reason why I managed to overlook its structural failings. I mean, let's get real. I still read comic books and YA lit. I've been known to quote the phrase "We're grown-ups now, we get to decide what that means!" I've built forts alone in my apartment and spent the afternoon reading in them. For all of my cultivated adultness (high heels, jazz, scotch) and I can still summon the enthusiasm of an eight year old. 

I'm starting to wonder if it's healthy. 

***

I'm childish when it comes to big emotions. 

I'm not talking the sugar-coated "childlike wonder" at things that we're not supposed to lose. I'm talking temper tantrums and meltdowns. While I don't actually throw temper tantrums when things aren't going my way and tend to keep my meltdowns private (bourbon, gummi bears) emotionally I don't think I'm far off of those little kids who make you roll your eyes in grocery stores. I justify selfish motives with Adult Logic (I'm susceptible to depression and need to be happy and distracted, we both knew what we were getting into, I didn't make any promises) and call it good, even as I know I'm being selfish. When relationships, regardless of whether or not they're platonic or otherwise, start to have actual issues I cut and run. I pull the fade away or say that I'm opting out of the relationship because I really need to do what's best for me, and for now that's not having any contact with you. It's like when an eight year old gives you the silent treatment, pathetic, childish, and irresponsible coming from an adult woman. 

I act this way in an attempt to keep myself from having to feel any big emotions: shame, regret, anger, sadness, anything that isn't the sheer, manic joy that keeps me buoyed up most days. They're the actions and emotions Michelle calls me out on while we're drifting quietly across the lake. And while I recognize that what I'm doing is harmful not only to me but to my relationships in the long run, I don't think I want to stop doing it. It's time to grow up, and like every other overtired child, I'm stomping my foot and pouting. 

But I don't want to.