Like The Polar Icecaps

I don’t do well with change or surprise in regards to my schedule or the way I feel things ought to go. This weekend I had to take a hard look at myself and the way I act in response to things happening around me and what I found is that if this whole mother/wife/human being thing is going to work for me I really need to change my knee jerk reactions to moments that go off script. In my last blog I mentioned that when we got back from the movies last night we found that mom and dad had taken Laine to the White’s house for dinner, what I didn’t mention is the complete and total emotional meltdown that I had. In the span of two minutes I went from fine to completely insane with worry to relieved to angry to whatever. It was an intense rollercoaster of emotions that hit me all at once and in the car ride from mom’s to the Whites I cried like a baby from all those sensation marbles rolling around and bouncing off each other in my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack. I try really hard to hide those things from Erik because I know it’s an irrational reaction so he doesn’t even know I was crying. I mean I knew that Laine was fine, I knew she was in the best of care, but the thing that no one understands about me or refuses to indulge me in is that my initial thoughts when coming home to an empty house is going to be that something is so terribly wrong that even a phone call was out of the question. (My mom DID call me, I just didn't have my phone on me, so it's my own fault.)I had visions of seizures and 105 degree fevers and dog bites; not hamburgers and peach cobbler. But hamburgers and peach cobbler is all it was and I accepted that right away and I was able to clear my head but really only after I ran out of my parents house into the car, cried silently so hard that my throat still hurts and then linebacker-ed my way into the Whites to snatch my kid away from whoever was holding her and hug on her until she started crying because I was being too aggressive. Then she saw her dad and she wanted to be held by him. Seeing her reach for Erik is what made everything all of a sudden okay. It was only at the point when she did an everyday thing, a usually overlooked simple gesture that knocked me back to my senses.
This whole scenario is what is wrong with me. I joke sometimes about the way I over react to things or just get overly worked up over things, but really, it isn’t funny, it’s not something that I need to dismiss, it’s something that I need to change, to actively work to change, otherwise I will one day go insane.