big feelings and a secret back door

As a lifelong socio, I don’t like big feelings. I prefer to keep my feelings, big, small or otherwise, to myself. I am not a “wear my heart on my sleeve” kind of person. So, when I have a big feeling, I feel awkward and exposed. The only thing worse than having a big feeling is a spontaneous big feeling.  I define a spontaneous big feeling as a feeling that comes on suddenly with no warning that you can’t control. Most of the time I can push those big feelings down, save them for later and have them in private. Not this week….

The situation was not good. I had something I had to do that I did not want to do. It’s not that I didn’t want to do it really, it was a task that no one wants to do, ever. That no one should ever have to do, cause it’s super sad.  I had to pick something up, it wasn’t a good thing, but it wasn’t a bad thing.  It was something that I really loved, only it wasn’t the way I wanted it to be.  The thought of the pickup was bringing up lots of feelings, big feelings, sad feelings, feelings that I didn’t want to have. But no matter how hard I tried to push the feelings down; they keep bubbling back up. It wasn’t going to be good this time.

I had a few friends who offered to go with me.  The socio me, who is mostly fine without people, did not want to ask anyone. I went alone. I pulled up to the non-descript building with no sign. I had to check my GPS for the address, yup this was the place.  It was a sad little brown building, with a white garage door on the front.  If you didn’t know what they did in this place, you would pass right by without a second thought. The sky was cloudy and gray. It started to drizzle, which I felt was about right for this particular sad day. I went in.

I told them who I was and why I was here.  A young girl with a well-used pity face led me into a small conference room.  She said something about water and maybe something else, but I had already started panicking, wishing I could run away looking for a secret back door so I could escape.  There was no back door.

I looked around the room, it was a sad looking death room.  Signs of death were all around.  They were in pretty colors of blue, green and red, urns stacked next to each other in one corner.  Shiny dog tags and mementos displayed on the table.  A big picture with a young girl next to an old man, framed so nicely. I could not appreciate the effort they must have made to make the death room look welcoming.  I did not feel welcome.  I was looking for the exit. The only tell was a random box of Kleenex.  I felt sick.

The girl came back with an envelope. Her pity face remained. She pulled some papers out of the envelope. The first paper looked like a graduation certificate, wait what the hell? Why did they need to have a certificate?  I didn’t get it. But then, in that instant, the big feelings that I had been pushing down for the last few weeks, came flooding back. Suddenly I was crying over a silly, nonsense, stupid piece of paper. Spontaneous BIG FEELING ALERT! I was apologizing and reaching for the Kleenex. It wasn’t full-on ugly crying, just about 30 seconds of hard grief, started in a flash and ended just as quickly. I was done. Where was that goddamn door?  I told the girl she had a terrible job, (even in grief I managed to say exactly what I was thinking), wiped my eyes and told her to go on. Her pity face remained but she enhanced it with a stinky cheese look.

The next paper was a travel paper, in case we wanted to travel. Great, thanks I muttered. I felt like this could have all been on a piece of paper, like instructions.  I thought this pickup would have been much easier if I was the UPS guy picking up my package or a drive up, like picking up my dinner. I would have preferred it like a drug deal, where I pulled up, handed over some cash, and they handed me the goods. NO WORDS SPOKEN!! Just move on quickly! That way we could all deny anything had gone down.  This was the longest moment ever. Still no door.

Then, tacky, tacky, tacky.  The upsell. Did I need help with handling my package? Did I want to purchase any of the death products, on and on.  At this point I could have grabbed her by the collar, stared directly into that stinky cheese pity face, and said, “just give me my stuff so I can go!”  But I didn’t, I waited politely until she finished her sales pitch, said no thank you and prayed for no more spontaneous big feelings. She went to get my package.

Finally, here we are; an ordinary blue reusable bag, with a box inside. Neat and tidy on the shitty brown table in the death room. I am thinking, this is done now!  I get to leave, run to my car, have some big feelings, and get on with my day, well not really.  She continued to talk, more stuff that she just had to tell me.  She started talking about a coin.  I thought, did I black out? WTF is she talking about? The coin, it traveled with them, never left their side, like it was a magical coin.   Listen, pity stinky cheese face girl, why can’t you see how much I want to get out of this death room?  Where’s that f’ing secret back door?  Can I grab the bag and run?  Will you ever shut up?

Then, she’s done. I grab the bag. Get to my car and get the hell out. In the quiet of my car, I try to decide if I need to cry or vomit or both. I did neither. Driving home alone, the rain was coming down much harder, both outside my car and inside my heart. I hate big feelings.