Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Apologies, I fell into a pit.

Carrying on with requests

So here's the thing. A lot of people I know have been having Issues of late, with husbands, boyfriends, work, family etc. Her Minkieness included. The causes are varied, from I feel stupid in class to I don't know if I can handle a long-distance relationship. But the solution, she proclaims loudly, is the same!

Okay, to backtrack a bit, in the not-so-distant past MinCat was having some emotional distress issues (those of you who knew her as a superintelligent shade of blue would remember the angst and drama of her life). The biggest issues were, of course, family related, but many were, equally predictably, boy related. The strange part was how difficult it was to actually get PAST these almost ancient issues that really were not relevant to my life anymore. So I did what any sensible kitty does, I saw a shrink.

In the course of our brief but immensely useful interaction I learnt that Mr. Dylan of my title was right all along. You see, my problem was not so much that so and so had done such and such and I felt bad about it or because of it. My problem was that I would keep telling myself it served me right for believing in so and so, or taking such and such seriously, that I was a Strong Independent Woman and should be above petty hurts, that we were all grown ups and no-one actually picked sides, things just turned out the way they did. So that people could say to me secure in the knowledge that I wouldn't object, "Come ON! Don't be difficult! If she's not making it awkward why should you?"*

What I realised was that in all the being-an-adult and you-only-brought-this-upon-yourself I completely refused to acknowledge the fact that I had been hurt by the people closest to me, and that hurt was made worse by everyone avoiding the subject and there being no space to say "yes, it was a horrible thing that happened out of the blue", even if there was no blame assigned. There was no space for me to say "Hey! She was being difficult when she pulled that shit in the first place!" even if only to myself. Which meant of course that I was refusing to be hurt and thus couldn't get past being hurt.

The point of this ramble is that while it seems like the only way to get past something is to put it away in the back of the wardrobe and lock it up, it has turned out, in my experience, to be a far better thing to just dive headfirst into it and blubber and scream and lie under the quilt watching chickflicks. In short, if you're feeling something, nevermind WHAT it is, WHY it is or whether it should be, just feel it. Don't think twice, its all right to feel. And once you're done feeling it, it will go away.


*Okay, okay, more backtracking. When I was in college, I spent the first year in a private hostel for women and the second year in a flat with three girls from the hostel. My roommate in the flat was my bestest friend. Another girl, from my class at college, who was my bestest friend THERE, was desperate for a place to live so she came and bunked with me for a month. We shall call her M for now. By the end of the month M had convinced all my other flatmates that I was a conniving gossip and was spreading all kinds of stories about them all over college. End result, I had no best friends and nearly flunked one paper. What happened the next year when we came back was that the group of friends we had in common in college had not picked sides, but had to divide time between the two of us. Being wildly enthusiastic about college community things, and not actively anti-social, I had several other people I could hang out with at the cafeteria or on the lawn at any given point, which meant that the common friends said no no she's all alone you see, thereby spending all their time with her. Which is ok, but it did mean that I had a year when I had no idea what was going on in their lives and the like. Eventually one of them got married and M and the third girl were her bridesmaids. I didn't know anyone at that wedding except them, and so I was very reluctant to go, which is when I was told to stop being difficult.