The Stranger
Everyone goes south every now and then.
Well, it finally happened: I lost my shit.
Right now I’m dealing with a number of unpredictable, frustrating situations in which I have absolutely no control—plus, you know, the world is a dumpster fire—and at last, it all got to me and I exploded.
God bless the used car salesman who caught the brunt of it.
(But don’t officially bless him until he follows through on overnighting us THE OWNER TITLE HE FORGOT TO BRING WITH HIM when he delivered our 2021 Golf and took off back to Connecticut with our big fat check, rendering it impossible for us to register the goddamned thing. 🥴)
For context, generally speaking, I am not a big loser of my shit. I pride myself on being the kind of reasonable, rational person who can usually hold it together in situations that would lead most to flip out. Sometimes I surprise myself with how calm and cool and I can remain under even the most tense conditions. It’s mostly a good thing, but it can tip over into “needless wonder” territory, and when I spend too much time there, eventually I blow up.
***
In the early 90s, a therapist deliberately put me into group therapy with a bunch of other patients known to fly off the handle because she saw me, for both better and worse, as a “stabilizing force.” It hadn’t been my idea to do group therapy. The shrink asked me to, and said that if I was unhappy there, I could quit after three months.
Boy did group suck. Each 90-minute session, others would lash out chaotically—at one another, at the therapist, at me. I didn’t know how to be heard, or if I even wanted to. Group only added stress to my life. It was like an amped up version of every situation I’d ever been in with raging narcissists, and I have been in a lot of those. When the three months were up, I told the therapist I was done.
“You can’t quit!” she insisted. “You’re the stabilizing force!”
She added that I wasn’t just serving the others—one of the goals was for me to learn to own and express my anger, to stand up for myself in a reasonable way, to be less of a peace-maker, less of a kid-gloves-handler of rageaholics, a category of people to whom I seemed hopelessly magnetized. To be less of an exploding doormat.
In hindsight I can see what she was trying to achieve, and maybe if I’d stuck it out, I would have eventually gained some insight into the limiting role I kept playing in the kind of drama I kept unconsciously seeking out and getting lost in. But at 27 I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t tolerate the constant upheaval, the nonstop provocations in that tiny office, and not knowing how to respond to it all, other than to roll over and play dead, or cry.
So I quit—in a huff, the ugly last phase of the “needless wonder’ cycle.
***
I don’t want to bog you down with the details of the many frustrating things I’m dealing with right now. Nor do I want to go into the specifics of this comedy-of-errors transaction with the used car salesman, something that should have taken two days, but has so far taken a month. Suffice it to say that Brian and I haven’t done anything wrong, and our speaking out and standing up for ourselves in the face of the dealership’s lame behavior has been 100% warranted and understandable at every turn.
But after I wasted two hours at the DMV dealing with my inability to register the car because I hadn’t been given the owner title, when I called the dealership and the receptionist told me someone would get back to me “later today or tomorrow,” I heard myself say, in a disembodied monstrous voice:
“YOU HAVE SOMEONE CALL ME BACK IN THE NEXT 30 MINUTES OR I WILL GET IN MY CAR AND DRIVE THE 1.5 HOURS TO YOUR DEALERSHIP AND I WILL MAKE A SCENE.”
“I will make a scene”?!?! Me? Did I say that?
On the plus side, it sure did get me a call back within 30 minutes. On the minus side, boy did I feel like shit for taking out my frustrations on the receptionist, a person who had nothing to do with what happened, and no power. I hate that rarely-seen version of me. I want better for myself and everyone involved than for me to ever be harsh—in texts, on the phone, over voicemail—even when the situation calls for it.
I have this sort of Zen ideal in mind—a level of detachment that would allow me to say what I need to, firmly but kindly, at all times, even in the most distressing situations. Like, genuinely, not another instance of “the needless wonder” pretending to be Zen, while inching toward an eruption.
Well, I suppose at least it’s an enviable goal.
On another note, related to my March 21st piece about how uncomfortable I am with all things money, I wanted to share a funny anecdote.
The guy painting our house offered a $2K break if we paid in cash. So of course I’m paying that way. But that meant going to the bank and taking out several thousand dollars in bills, not something I’m in a habit of doing. I was worried it would seem sketchy for some reason.
When it was my turn in line at Chase, I started almost involuntarily running my mouth.
“Hi, I need to take out $____ in cash. It’s just because I’m getting my house painted. The painter is giving us a deal because we’re paying in cash. Isn’t that so great? So, here I am! Getting cash! For the house painter!”
I went on and on, nervously. The teller waited for me to finish and then, visibly holding back laughter, said, “You know, don’t have to tell me all of this. You’re allowed to take money out of your bank account.”
Oh, right.
Okay, back I go tonight to LI, where my mom is doing a little better but not nearly better enough. I’ll be toggling LI and upstate for a bit, playing nurse while trying to work—another frustrating situation beyond my control.
Hopefully I’ll find a way to achieve equanimity. Or hang onto some basic semblance of sanity. Or at least not become unhinged and completely lose my shit like I did a couple of hours ago.
I loved your refreshing commentary on losing your shit. It made me think of my dear Jungian therapist (at 75 I gave myself Jungian therapy as a birthday gift) and in telling her one of my regular victim stories as a young teen forever getting into it with my narcissistic mother…I finished my story and my therapist said, “Have you ever considered that you were not the victim, but instead “a bomb thrower”? Well, it has helped me let go of my victim stance, and I’m usually quite proud of myself when I recognize occasions when I’ve been a bomb thrower. Thanks for a delightful read!
Sometimes losing it is the only way to get something either understood or done. Even if not a great strategy in the long run, it seems to very much work in the short run! Really like the new color!