That sinking feeling

Sometimes I get stuck on things.

It’s not something I mean to do, or that I can consciously control. It’s not something I usually understand or that I know how to change.

Sometimes I just get stuck on things.

There’s a lot of jokes, stand up comedy and movies about the female capability to hold grudges for insanely long times. There’s talk on how they’re like elephants, because they never forget a thing. People kid about their talent to take something that happened years ago and use it as a argument in the next fight you’re bound to have, regardless of it’s relevance. And though I’ve never appreciated the fact that that’s apparently a ‘girl’-thing. It’s what I do.

Sometimes. I really. Just. Get. Undeniably. Stuck on things.

When they say women hold grudges, that makes it seem like an active process. Like a grudge is consciously kept and polished. Like it’s put in a shiny cabinet for safekeeping, with new fire being breathed into it every now and then to keep it burning. That’s not how grudges work. For me.

Sometimes I just…inevitably….get stuck on things.

Do you know that sinking feeling you get when you were in a conversation with someone, whether it was a flirty, fighty or heavy talk, and you only come up with the perfect thing to say way, way, WAY after that talk is already over? That knowledge that settles in that you did not say all you could have said? Or were meant to say? That sadness that follows when you realize there could have been so much more potential reached? That’s how I get stuck on things.

Because I don’t hold grudges. Actively. But yet they somehow bury themselves into me, fester in unseen places till the moments that they can be unearthed and used (which, in most cases, is hopefully never). I AM that person who’ll throw a wrong you’ve done me ages ago in your face. Hell. You may never have realized you wronged me because at the time and in that moment, I will not have responded as wronged. My hurt takes long to settle. Like one of those cartoon turtles who get spooked and only respond seconds later to the attack, it takes me a while to register my pain, sometimes.

I’ll have that sinking feeling of failure – knowing I ‘missed’ an opportunity somewhere – and get stuck. It tends to happen most when it involves people that I lose or break contact with, because there’s no better time to remain ‘unfulfilled’ when you no longer have the chance to correct anything. At all. Ever.

I don’t have a shiny cabinet of grudges. I have a soul full of marks, darts pricked into it with tiny labels attached, that sit there waiting and hoping for a time that I can pull them from the flesh they’re infecting. But there’s days that I’ll stand in front of a mirror and get so very stuck. I’ll be staring at those darts, trying to wiggle them loose and know that they’re to remain there forever. Sitting on the couch thinking back to the situations and conversations that spawned them, the people that threw them and the way I can’t fucking ever go back to those times and BE who I was meant to be. Say what I was meant to say. Do what I should totally have fucking done. Whether that’s offer the comfort I wish I’d get more often. Or throw the punch someone’s face just deserved. I’ll consider and reconsider and overponder all of the choices that lead up to that point and try to fix the path to what is already an inevitable past. And get stuck.

These are the days I play the love-songs of love lost. The song ‘we’ played and that held meaning. They are the days that I eat the foods or go the places or see the movies that belong to ‘then’, to whatever we were doing when the dart was thrown. And nostalgically go over what was, could have been and should have happened. But they are also the days I won’t want to get out of bed, or get to work. They’re the days that self-pity conquers self-awareness and when ‘could have been’ makes ‘can still be’ impossible. But no matter how much I (or the people around me) might want to – getting unstuck is where it becomes difficult. Not impossible. But difficult.

Lucky for me – those ‘stuck’ moods, with their sudden onsets and inexplicable causes. With their far-going effects and deep impact, are far and few between. Hell, please don’t read this thinking ‘she’s in one of them right now’. It’s a concept I wanted to share, maybe to gain some insights through the replies you so often kindly send me, or just to read back to when I do ‘get stuck’.  Not because it’s a current issue but because it’s currently something I would love to resolve and prevent in the future.

Because I don’t want to be stuck on things.