If I want a 100% guarantee that I’ll be in a bad mood, all I have to do is walk three minutes from my apartment, swipe my T-usual card, and step foot on the metro. I’m convinced that it’s the one place on earth that brings out the absolute worst in everyone (yes, myself included).
It doesn’t take much for me to start questioning the sanity of everyone around me. People love to stand ungodly close to me on public transport, or, even worse, listen to TikTok out loud on full volume. I don’t actually mind the amateur rappers and beat boxers who hop from station to station, hoping to pick up a few euros. At least they are being honest about the fact that they are participating in sheer chaos.
It’s everyone who is operating under the guise that they are normal who I take issue with. You know, it’s the people who push you out of their way, who halt to a stop in the middle of a crowded platform, and who whack you with their massive backpacks who make me actually want to scream.
I’ve always felt this way about living in the city. I always say that when you’re in the city, you can’t hide your crazy like you can in the country or the suburbs. There’s no pleasant patch of grass to sink your feet into once a day or long drives to unpack your thoughts. Instead, I listen to my French neighbors having loud, performative sex in the background of my virtual meetings, and I have gun range protection headphones that I wear in my office to block out the construction noise. I’m in everyone’s business, and they are in mine.
You could easily say, “Sawyer, if this is such an issue for you, why don’t you go somewhere a little more calm? A little less chaotic?” Well, it’s not that simple. Just as so many of us love friends, family members, and partners for the exact thing that drives us the craziest about them, so I am with the city.
I love that if I wake up scared in the middle of the night, I know that there’s always someone close by that I could team up with. I’m fascinated when I get a peek into everyone’s unique little daily song and dance. To see an abuela hang her laundry on the line three stories above where a group of German tourists get lost on the way to some centuries-old landmark. It feeds my brain and excites my soul. But, if you catch me on a bad day, it will set me all the way off. And lately, it’s been way too easy to set me off.
Cut to my therapy session last week (it always comes back to therapy, doesn’t it?). When I first started therapy, about two years ago, I would feel hungover for a full day after each session. It was really so emotionally taxing that my body had the same reaction as if I drank an entire bottle of Rioja the night before. After going consistently, things started to get a bit more regulated. There were less hyper-emotional sessions and more calm “wow, I hadn’t thought of it like that before!” type sessions. But, every once in a while, one of those full-body, intense sessions sneaks up on me. That’s what happened on Monday.
I’m going through some major transitions in life that I can’t quite go into detail about yet (annoying, I know). Much of what I’m going through has been against my will. My metro attitude — aka chip on my shoulder, F-you, why can’t everyone just behave attitude — always really pops off when I’m going through life events that feel a little out of control. I’ve “done the work” enough to realize that my excessive irritability in these moments often stems from anger.
It’s not that I genuinely think I’m better than anyone else or that I have no tolerance for the ways other people go about life. I actually think I’m a pretty open-minded person. My attitude is a symptom of the fact that I’m angry my own life isn’t going my way. But, how do I get rid of it? Usually, I turn to exercise. It’s one of the few things that helps me dissipate it. But, I pushed my knees too hard in a 10k recently, and I’m currently down for the count in that area. Soooo, I really needed some fresh ideas. I was expecting my therapist to recommend that I meditate, journal, or something of that nature. I wasn’t expecting what she said.
“Have you allowed yourself to be sad?”
As soon as she said it, my eyes welled up with tears. Remember, I was expecting a chill, non-crying session. I tried to brush it off, but the more I brushed it off, the more they filled up my eyes. I genuinely didn’t even know I was sad until she said the word! It’s like my body was just waiting for permission to release the sadness I unknowingly buried under layers of a pissy attitude.
Sadness is the hardest emotion for me to feel. It requires me to acknowledge that whatever I’m grieving actually meant something to me, and I’m too prideful to admit that, most of the time. I really wasn’t expecting the sadness > anger > irritability pipeline to be so linear, but for me, turns out it is.
So, I cried. I gave my sadness some room to breathe. I told myself that there’s nothing wrong with being sad. I also reminded myself that I’m lucky to have gone through a season that meant so much to me, no matter what’s to come. I’m tired of the whole unfazed and unattached disposition being synonymous with strong and cool. It results in me side-eyeing someone who cut me off before I could step on the platform escalator, which incidentally is neither of those things.
I’m choosing to be sad when I need to be, then to shift into gratefulness — for this era, for what I’ve learned, and for where I’m headed. It’ll be a ride, no matter what. But, I’m not going to take the metro to get there.
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