01346: Lower The Gates!

In times of crisis, I quite literally feel walls starting to fall into place inside me - you know, like medieval castle gates crashing down before the invaders can even approach the moat. Or maybe in my mind, it's like how Autobot City prepares to repel the Decepticons in the original 1986 Transformers movie.

You know how it is - we all have our emotional defenses that come into play when we come face to face with potential trauma. And the death of a loved one - "even" for a dog. But for people like us here in the ASA Family, Poy-Poy was pretty much our kid, our surrogate child, and thus his passing is pretty traumatic indeed.

So you can only imagine what it was like in my head as things started to come down. As much as they were my own defenses coming into play, it still felt like the very walls of Jericho coming down inside of me.

Sound Red Alert.  Raise shields and power all weapons. Get non-essential personnel to quarters and have security teams armed in case of boarders. THAT sort of thing. If I had any special emotional armor, that was certainly the time for it.

You see, it's not just about steeling myself against potential pain. It's also about making sure that I'm still able to function as a normal human being. More often than not, someone needs to be rational during a moment of crisis. And I find myself typically the one left holding the bag, or at least the one who happens to be able to speak logically and still make generally rational decisions. Thus as the walls come crashing down to prevent the chances of losing the entire ship to the cold waters of the Atlantic (because I enjoy mixing metaphors today), I also feel most of my emotional turmoil drain away, at least temporarily.

I know, it's not a good thing to push my emotions aside like this - but it's not like I do this all the time. It's only just long enough to get past the crisis and make sure things get handled. It happened at key moments like when my father died five years ago and again when the news of Poy-Poy dying came through. This doesn't mean I won't cry - the tears come a lot more freely these days, I've noticed. But I won't get lost in the crying either, I'll still pretty much keep my cool.

And like how Fort Kerium would transform into a sealed city in the old Bravestarr cartoons, just because it's secure doesn't mean it's safe. Fort Kerium was filled with an odd mix of humans, aliens and sentient robots after all. They weren't exactly purely law-abiding citizens. Nor were they all evil criminals either. And that little powder keg can be pretty dangerous when kept bottled up too long.

I don't exactly explode, but I do have my share of breakdowns. As much as possible I try to relieve the pressure in my head and heart in private as as quietly as possible. Sometimes it's unavoidable that other people may be caught in the crossfire. And more often than not it's bound to be my loved ones, especially the likes of Tobie and Prince.

And while I trust them to understand me more than anyone else in the world, it doesn't make it feel any better that my emotional outbursts may potentially hurt their feelings or involve me saying something stupid that I'm going to regret later.

I'm doing my best to avoid anything like that this week with Poy-Poy's death and some tangential concerns. But I can only manage so much as a human being. And yet I continue to try my best.


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Comments

  1. someone needs to be rational during a moment of crisis <- so true and so apt. I'm glad that there are three of you there to even out the odds of having someone rational left to do things right :D

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  2. Sorry to hear about Poy-Poy's passing :(

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