It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry

   Sometimes I lose my shit. I don't mean I misplace my possessions (though I do an awful lot of that too.) I mean I lose. my. shit. I freak the fuck out, complete with full-scale stuttering and hyperventilating.
   I did this today. One minute I'm grouchy that I was woken up mid-nap to go to belly dancing, (I have a Shakira complex), the next I'm sitting alone in a parking lot, mumbling incomprehensibly through sobs to my Mother on the telephone, who is very sympathetically telling me she hasn't caught a single word.  "Nevermind!" I exclaim, frustrated, hanging up. As a car pulls up next to me, I curse the extended daylight hours I look forward to all winter long for making me vulnerable to this stranger. I'm not the type of girl who cries in public. I reach in the back seat and pretend to search through a bag, trying to look as if I'm doing anything other than having a complete mental and emotional breakdown by myself in the parking lot of a dance studio.
   Thought process: Exhausted, annoyed, apprehensive. I feel stress building. There's no other thing I can easily focus on, I'm too present in this experience. I need to remove myself mentally from this. As I swallow my grievances, I suddenly see the inside of my head.
   I'm watching every bad feeling, every negative thought I have, You don't seem to feel that my time is of any value whatsoever, falling down my throat, You will never be the man I want you to be, and softening inside me. I love you so much sometimes, and other times I think we're both selfish assholes who return to each other out of boredom and convenience. I literally see myself internalizing my fears and frustrations. But if you don't love me at all, what the hell are you doing here? And if I don't love you, why have I thought about you every day for the past four years? Even when we're apart, you're such a part of my life, of my head, of my waking up and going to sleep every day. "Do you think about me when we're not together?" I asked, fearfully, one night when I felt our relationship was secure enough to sustain honest discourse. "Sometimes," you said reassuringly, insistingly, as if that was supposed to please me. "Sometimes isn't enough," I wanted to protest. Of course I didn't. I just fought my facial features into remaining expressionless until the instinct to frown was suppressed.  I watch my bold, sharp words, vivid red with anger and passion and honesty smoothly dull at the edges, turn blue and then dissolve as I stifle them with detachment. This is my coping mechanism with bad things; I withdraw, retreat into myself and smother them until they're gone.
   Plus, today after reading an account of a toddler's mental scheme of a cat: small, warm, furry, soft, I became obsessed with adopting a kitten. (Admittedly, this is probably a pacifying replacement for my completely irrational desire to fast forward the next five years of my life, get married and have six babies.) But then my parents, who I am genuinely enjoying living with, dismissed the idea. I tried to accept the decision like the rational person I am, but hours later when my mother made a joke about it, I could barely control my absurdly emotional reaction. I know I never had him, but I feel like you're taking him away from me, I wanted to plead. I imagined him and it was like he was real, and I wanted to feed him a saucer of milk and introduce him to my niece and play in the yard with him. But I swallowed the plea, sent it inside to soften, turn cold and disappear with all the other things I want to say but never do.
   So, today was trying, from start to finish. But it's over and tomorrow, as always, is full of possibilities.