Feeling your feelings BLOWS.

Post-therapy-by-phone text to friends.

I might leave work early and pick up some more bonus therapy by way whiskey. And fried cheese. That’s probably what she really meant by “journaling.”

🎶 “I’ve got an itch to scratch, I need assistance…” 🎵

Who wants to remind me that the only way I’m ever having sex again is if I Irish down my anxiety and actually ANSWER the OkCupid messages?

“Fuck” of the Irish

Y’all enjoy your green beer and shamrock shit. I’ll be over here reppin’ OG Irish: whiskey, writing, and misanthropy. 

🥃✍🏽🖕🏽

The Slutty Skinny Heritage Workout

Texting a friend about exercise classes:

“I’ll tag along for the trampoline class, as long as you don’t mind me thinking it’s hilarious to keep telling people I put the ‘tramp’ in ‘trampoline.'”

“OMG, and ‘tramp-o-lean’ when I get skinny!”

“Aaaahhhh, ‘Tramp O’Line’ for my Irish side!”

“Sorry, I’m done now.”

Sorry, Irish. Shit’s getting real later.

I definitely shouldn’t be as proud as I am of my ability to choke down sudden-onset Feels and get on with my workday, but my GOD, this time was impressive.

I deserve some sort of Irish medal.

But…tonight is pretty much earmarked entirely for a date with Fiona Apple, bourbon, and an Ugly Cry.

And hey, happy bonus of the nausea: my lunch is still sitting untouched on my desk. They’re diet feelings this time! Feelings Lite! 100-Calorie Feelings!

Ahem. There’s a line from “Friends” where Chandler introduces himself by saying, “I’m Chandler, I make jokes when I’m uncomfortable.”

P.S. I’ll be fine. Don’t call any hotlines.

Upholding my finest family traditions…

Logically I know there’ll come a time when seeing my ex at a group gathering of “our” still-coupled friends won’t make my brain all swimmy afterward.

Now that I’m home from tonight’s festivities, though, since I’m half Irish and half redneck, let’s hear it for stifling my feelings with whiskey and off-key singing along to blaring country music.

Suck it, thinking.

Don’t make me hate you.

Over the weekend I finally settled an issue with a family member who “didn’t want to talk about this.”

I get that, I really do. I don’t want to talk about it, either. But if you keep refusing to talk when I need to, I will hate you. I won’t mean to hate you. I won’t want to hate you. But you’re telling me I’m not worth the time, or enduring the minor discomfort you’d feel during a conversation? No. I’m not gonna smile and play Cool Girl while I silently stew in your bullshit.

We’re adults. We talk about it, or we don’t talk. Your call. Reasonable? Of course not. But I’ve learned that NOT communicating solves nothing. It just creates larger problems because now everyone is operating on presumption and hurt feelings.

I forced a 10-minute, in-person conversation because I thought it was worth forcing (because I don’t want to spend my life butthurt), and now we’re good.

I fucking hate when hippies (ie, my therapist) are right and I can’t just be Irish and swallow my rage. Swallowing is my favorite. Oh. Wait, no…

The Asshole Files, Entry (…ew…) 1.

OK, so remember yesterday’s “asshole” warning? Let’s start easing into some of that…

I know this is partly my fault for letting so many “little things” go and stifling my feelings and then exploding (go Irish!), but I wish people who claim to know me understood how far they had to push me and how much they had to hurt me for me to NOT talk to them.

I WILL talk, eventually, because I’m generally too lazy and forgetful to hold a proper grudge — I have better uses for brain space. But for the moment, something you’ve done has shut me down, and I Basic Bitch “just can’t” with you. You broke me; I need to “breathe and reboot,” to think things through before I blow up on you. And that’s always the time people are in my ass, setting up tent cities and trying to talk like we’re just cool now.

No. You should’ve talked before. Right now, fuck you. You’re picking a scab, making the wound worse, and giving me, like, emotional MRSA. I just need a minute.

(Or, OK, in extreme cases I’ve needed…10 months and [not-that-I’m-]counting, but A. That person should’ve known better, and nudity/trust were in play, and B. Right now it’s just my family I’m having issues with.)

Because CULTURE, goddammit!

I’m spending the evening embracing my Irish heritage. 

Or, to the untrained eye, I’m drinking Jameson, avoiding humanity, and writing.

Irish potato, Irish po-tah-to.

Getting my Irish up, then shoving it down

I had such a strange and confusing weekend that I don’t even know where to start. I haven’t even sorted through it all yet. I try, and then I have to lie down.

I guess first, I spoke to my sister, and then to my mother, at length — rookie mistake. On both occasions I sensed that, like me, they just store up their tensions with people until they blow up.

Except they don’t blow up AT the people. They wait for me, talk AT me for a fucking hour, and fix nothing. I get that they felt better after they got it OUT, but a) that’s what journals (or public anonymous blogs) are for, and b) the problem is still THERE. All because you “don’t want to start an argument?” So you just get angrier and angrier at a person who doesn’t know they’re even doing anything that hurts you because you’re keeping it all in your head? You don’t have to YELL at the people! Think rationally about what’s really bothering you, and why, and say it. How is you drinking about it more than a couple times a week helping anyone? (Also, welcome to my genetic legacy — this whole thing, drinking included, must be what my grandmother means by “gettin’ your Irish up.”)

Fuck THAT, I’ma tell everyone EVERYTHING. I’m not walking around like that.

I’m not encouraging them to pick fights about petty nonsense like their mate leaving the toilet seat up — this is deep-seated shit. It’s the kind of thing where I give my sister’s latest relationship 2 years at most because she’s being an ass.

Pick your battles, certainly. Some things aren’t worth arguing about. And I know it’s not always as easy as I’m making it sound, but…sometimes it is. Christ, don’t just let shit eat away at your soul. These are people you love, who love you. Let it go or let it out — if the person is worth having in your life, they’ll still be there when the smoke clears.

[/dismounting soapbox]