Pulling Back From The Edge.

 I find the older I get, the more emotional I get. I don't know if it's a matter of getting softer with each passing year, less testosterone or maybe we have more empathy as we age. I don't like it, I feel at times like I'm becoming unstable. I often thought it was a gay thing, other guys didn't seem to be going through the same or so I thought. I have noticed however some of my straight friends struggling with emotions now as well. I was having a good conversation one day with an older cousin of mine, she was asking how I was coping with everything, especially regarding mom. I confided in her that it bothers me regarding how emotional I can get. She just laughed and said "that's normal, especially men as they get older". She is much older than me, with a husband and three brothers, she assured me that I am normal. She went on to say that she felt the men in her life were more emotional and sentimental now than the women of the same age group. That made me feel good, looks like I am not the only one and it's not a "gay" thing. I wonder if especially for straight guys, it could be harder since from a young age, they learned to hide any emotions. Now they are experiencing a flood of emotions and have no skills to handle them.

 For myself, I feel there is a battle constantly going on, I think it's good to release tension but I also think it's dangerous to dwell on a sad event, I feel that it could drag me down, to a place where it could be hard to crawl out of. Emotions are weird, it's strange how they can just creep up on you, all it takes is a smell, the sight of a familiar place or a sound and suddenly you are back in time, in that very moment, not remembering the moment but actually in the moment with full emotional responses and all.

 I happened to be shopping last week and I could faintly hear this really pretty song, I was thinking to myself that I knew it but wasn't quite catching it over the store announcements. Suddenly everything went quiet and I could clearly here the song. It was a song I liked, by a group called the Sundays, (Here's Where The Story Ends). In a split second it transported me back to the last time I remember hearing it. Dan and I had broke up, I had hoped we would fix things but he had asked me to collect the rest of my stuff from his place. My sister and I drove out and everything was waiting outside in a shed. We packed up the cars and left, he never came out of the house. We didn't have room for everything so after I stopped at a gas station, I text him to let him know he can do whatever he wanted with the rest of my belongings. I then text "take care of yourself Dan" and drove off knowing the relationship was truly over. While driving home, playing loudly was "here's where the story ends, here is where the story ends"!

  I wasn't standing in a store, I was driving away from the only partner I ever had! My eyes were filling with water, my hands were shaking, my brain was sending out a red alert of eminent crying about to happen and suddenly I heard a voice. This is absolutely true, from the back of my mind, I clearly heard, in an annoyed tone, "get it together fag"! Just the shock value I needed, it almost made me laugh. I shook off the feeling and continued with my shopping. Part of my built in defence system I guess, I try to keep from going over that emotional edge.

 When I went home that evening from the store,  I googled the song "Here's Where The Story Ends" by The Sundays because it's just a pretty song, it has nothing to do with what happened, I wanted to take away that negative emotional power I felt when I heard it and to be honest, I want to give the song back its beauty.