Thoughts of a Post-Emotional-Outburst Woman

I made myself cry today. On purpose. When I was feeling no distress whatsoever.

I do this occasionally, for no observable reason. I'll just be feeling a bit bored and remedy that by daydreaming up a tragedy that leaves mascara streaming down my face, while I desperately hope I can remove any traces before my husband gets home and thinks somebody died.

Long after my self-induced emotional trauma, while I was still floating on that post-cry high, I had to ask myself, "I know at least 5 girls who will admit to doing this, and just about every woman I know will watch a 'cry movie' here and there when they 'feel like they could use a good cry.' I have never, ever heard of a man deliberately making himself cry. What's up with that???"

I know a little bit about the chemistry of crying. Apparently it releases toxins and such, but that doesn't explain why women cry so much more than men. So I decided to Google it.

Google was useless. One site claimed that the same proteins that stimulate breast milk also cause tears (which would be a great explanation... if I were lactating), another said it was because men had smaller tear ducts, so when they cried we just couldn't see it (nope... not buying that one), and another said it was because men sweat more, so they don't need to cry (I might be able to believe that one... as it also explains why many of the men in my experience naturally smell like B.O. and farts so much more often than the women). Still, I happen to know women who sweat plenty, and not only do they not smell like men, but they also cry up a good storm as often as any other woman I know.

No, Google didn't give me an answer. What Google DID give me, however, was a passel of advice articles on what to do if your girlfriend is crying. And, of course, being the crying girl in that scenario, I had to see what advice my potential comforters were being given.

Best advice:  "Whatever you do, don't ever blame PMS for her outbursts — even if you, she and the calendar know better." From AskMen.com.

Thank you, AskMen.com, for saying this. Because, we DO cry for no reason, as I clearly did today, when hormones are not involved. And we cry for reasons that some people don't understand, but make perfect sense to us. And we cry when we're feeling hormonal and irrational and we know it doesn't make sense for us to feel the way we do, but dammit, that's how it feels and the fact that it makes no sense just makes it that much more traumatic. No matter why we're crying, having someone dismiss our feelings as "just hormones" is the quickest route to turn that high level of emotion into a homicidal rage.

Worst Advice: "If the woman tells you what is wrong, first determine if you can help her to fix the problem. Show her that you are a gentleman, or at least a decent guy. If you can help her fix the problem, tell her so and ask her if she wants you to help her fix it." From WikiHow.

No. Just... no. Freak, no. If we want someone to fix our problems, we will say so. Crying is NOT a request for problem solving. Frequently, it just feels like the guy is trying to get us to stop crying, or reducing our complex emotion into the simple scenario that caused it, and I'm pretty sure I've made it clear that we NEED TO CRY.

What we need most while crying is validation for the fact that we are crying. If we're crying because things suck, then yes. Things suck. If we're hormonal, that sucks. If we're crying because we're happy... great! That's... heck, not even we know why we're crying in that scenario, but sure. Let it rain.

I don't know why so many men don't cry, but women do because it feels good. It's refreshing and cathartic. Stressed? Sad? Angry? Frustrated? A solid cry is a good way to relieve any of that. Bored? Feeling a tad emotionally dull? Yep! Have a nice cry. It'll pep you right up!

So, if I could just add to the advice I read today, remember this: Tears are not a crisis. In fact, more often than not, they are a solution. They purge negative emotion and bring renewal, replacing stress, anger, and sorrow with strength and the ability to more easily move forward. If your girlfriend/wife/sister/mother/totally-platonic-female-friend is crying, encourage it. Validate it. It's a good thing, and she'll be so much better once she's done scrubbing the mascara off her cheeks.

The Emotion of Food

Turns out food is actually an emotion.

I didn't know this until I started compiling a menu for weight loss.

See, at work we just released a new weight loss product, and on our website we're going to have all these resources for people trying phase 2 of New Year's Resolutions, where you realize it's March and you haven't actually started, and then, motivated by crushing guilt and post-Valentine's chocolate weight, you spend a couple weeks buying weight loss products and thinking about cooking from weight loss menus, before deciding that, Hey! You lost 2 whole pounds! You're doing just fine, and should probably celebrate those 2 pounds with Bavarian cream donuts.

Because you've earned it.

Anyway, the menu I'm compiling comes from a book that lists what you should eat for a 2,000 calorie diet, and then has modifications for 1600 and 1200 calories.

Wow.

So much emotion. I never knew food could rip into my heart like that.

Let me give an example.

My first reaction, as I see strictly proscribed breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner (yes, your snacks are proscribed for you... and you only get one) is a sort of dread. But... what if I want two snacks? What if I get hungry at 10:37 AM, and it's not time for lunch yet? What about second breakfast? Elevensies? Afternoon tea? Supper?

I don't think the guy who wrote this book knew about second breakfast.

My next reaction varies, depending on the menu item. When I get to snack, and it says "Cottage Cheese, Pear, Walnuts," I sort of gag a little in my mouth.

I'm sorry, but a "snack" is a brownie with ice cream on it, followed by a bag of fruit snacks. If you're feeling creative, put the fruit snacks on the ice cream. If you're feeling virtuous, use one of the Fiber One brownies that has enough fiber in it to make you feel like you're eating something healthy, and then confirms your personal health-choice by making you gassy enough to stave off the planet's energy crisis. Don't give me this 4 oz. of no-salt cottage cheese and a tablespoon of walnuts crap.

Then I get to dinner. Roast chicken breast, baked potato, honey glazed carrots, salad, and frozen yogurt.

What happens in my heart? Relief! Oh, the joy! Listen to those menu items! Roast chicken breast? Into my head immediately pops one of those rotisserie chickens from the deli section of the grocery store. Like, a whole chicken. Baked potato? Mmmmmm! Butter and cheeeeeeeese!!!! Honey glazed carrots? You know, I had a roommate who made the most perfect version of those I have ever encountered. Salad... meh. Sure. Have your greens, I guess. But it'd better be a Caesar salad with Parmesan cheese and croutons. Frozen yogurt? Now we're talking! TCBY, baby!

Oh... but I'm not recording the 2,000 calorie version.

No, I start going through the details and portions on the items. You only get 3 oz. of chicken breast, and it's a breast with no... anything. Just chicken. No sauce. No glaze. Not even the skin.
Same with the baked potato. Not even butter. Just potato. Oh, and if you're doing the 1200 calorie version, you only get half a potato.
The carrots still look good. You can have a full cup of those.
The salad... not Caesar. And you only get a single, tiny tablespoon of dressing.
The frozen yogurt? 1/2 a cup. That's it. And if you're on the 1200 diet, nothing.
Seriously, nothing. No dessert at all.

Do you know what emotion this makes? Do you know what I feel?

Sadness.

Crushing, heart-heavy sadness.

The weight of all the food I can't eat sits on my chest, threatening to cave it in as I fight through the pain, reminding myself that I just have to type the menu, not adhere to it.

But food.

Food is heavy stuff.

Amish Guilt Bread

About a week and a half ago I took a little jaunt up to Idaho to visit my little brother (and by little, I mean a good 8-10 inches taller than me, depending on whether or not he's wearing his cowboy boots, and outweighing me by 80 lbs... my absolutely minuscule, tiny brother). It was his daughter's first birthday, and there was no way I was missing that party.

While I was there, little brother introduced me to a phenomenon known as "Amish Friendship Bread." It is a bread that spawns from a starter mixture that only the Amish know!!! I'm pretty sure it consists of nothing more than milk, flour, sugar, and yeast. Anyway, since only the Amish know the recipe, the only way to get your hands on this starter is by receiving it from a friend... who got it from a friend... who got it from a friend... who mugged an Amish woman in Pennsylvania just so he could get the recipe. The Amish woman didn't give him the recipe, but, being Amish, invited her assailant in, fed him a loaf of bread, and sent him away with a starter and a promise to come visit the family next Easter.

So, here's the deal. If you get the starter, you have to wait 10 days before cooking it. It has to ferment. Sounds tasty, right? Sure. Anyway, you just squish the bag a few times, add some more milk, sugar, and flour on day 5 or so, and voila. You have a bunch of bread material right there.

Then comes the tricky part. You have to add more flour, sugar, and milk, divide it up into 4 portions, keep one for yourself, and then you must give 3 portions to your 3 closest friends, or else you don't have any friends, nobody loves you, and you will never get the starter back! If it does come back, you know who your friends are.

Basically, this is Amish chain mail.

Now, for those of us who only bake when we want to, because we want to, this 10 day program has a bit of a hiccup in it. And that's... well... when day 10 rolls around, you'd better hope you're in the baking mood, because there's not much wiggle room for "I don't wanna."

Day 10 hit.

I texted my little brother, asking if I had to bake the bread right then, or if it could maybe ferment for, you know, another month. He responded that I might be able to eek another couple days out of it, but that I'd really better not wait too long.

Day 12 hit.

I started feeling guilty.

I mean, I got this from my brother, and I needed to know who my friends were, because without this friendship bread, I might have to rely on emails I stopped forwarding in 1998, and those have a tendency to curse you with bleeding eye sockets and failure in love for the rest of your life if you don't send them fast enough.

Also, the dough was emitting so much gas that the Ziploc freezer bag it was in was about to explode all over my kitchen.

So, even though I was SO NOT in the baking mood tonight, I sucked up and did it.

I added the extra milk, flour, and sugar.

The directions clearly outlined the next step: "Measure out 4 separate batters.... Keep a starter for yourself and give away the other three to friends."

I snorted. "Ha. Screw that. If I give them to friends I might get one back."

So, rather than give my dearest of friends a bag of something they have to wait 10 days to eat, and can only eat after cooking it themselves, and then risk getting one back and having to do the whole thing all over again, I simply tripled the recipe and decided to make a LOT of bread. If I actually have any friends... which I will never know, since I'm not sending out any starters... I can make them think we're friends by giving them a cooked loaf of this stuff instead.

Then came the most ridiculously complicated bread recipe I could possibly have thought of attempting. Three separate trips to the store and some misread directions later, I finally had my 2 largest mixing bowls filled to the brim with dough. Oh... and let me just include... FOUR HOURS LATER. I feel that, for not being in the baking mood, that alone is quite the monumental accomplishment.

So, I baked the bread. I rid myself of the starter. I stopped the chain mail in its tracks.

"If you send this on, and it comes back to you, you will know who your true friends are. If you do not send this on to at least three friends, you will spend four hours baking bread, and then have to find homes for 3 loaves, 2 coffee cakes, and a pan of cupcakes."

That's right. The chain mail stops here.

Does anybody want some bread?

November 26th

Today I'm thankful for overcoming a personal pet peeve.

So, in Mormondom, there's this cultural thing where women are set up as "moral beacons" who are naturally, by virtue of their ovaries, filled with an innate goodness. Meanwhile men, by virtue of their Y chromosome, are inherently base.

This cultural thing has existed since the foundation of the church, when it was not just a Mormon idea, but a world-wide trend.

Even today, in secular society, we see traces of it. If a woman sleeps with 10 men in a single month, she is a ho. If a man sleeps with 10 women in a single month, he is a playa.

Now, personally, I don't subscribe to this theory that your inherent goodness is based on your chromosomes. Consequently, it has always bothered me when we have "you women are so special - it is your divine duty to be a moral beacon to the world because you are so inherently good because you're women, and men will never understand what it's like to be this good, and you were born closer to the Celestial Kingdom than men"  lessons in church.

I've even heard some special cupcakes go so far as to say that that is why more boys die as babies than girls - because babies who die go straight to heaven, so in order to have an even gender count in heaven, they need more men to die when they're still babies.

**facepalm**

Yeah... the attitude is a problem.

So, we'll have these lessons, where we're told it's our sacred duty to be moral beacons to the world, because we are women. This concept has always bothered me. Why is it our duty? Why don't the men have that same duty? We're not inherently better than them, no matter what the insecure teacher is saying, so why do they keep teaching that we're held to such a higher standard?

Today, while flipping through conference talks to prep for a visiting teaching message, I had an epiphany.

Alright, so yes. Men have the same duty - it's just taught a little differently to them. It's not "you have this duty because you are male," it's "you have this duty because you are a disciple of Christ." Encouraging and standing up for morality has and always will be a fundamental principle of Christianity.

But the thing is... as women... because of this totally unfair double standard, we have an extra tool. No matter how women got there - be it innate qualities or socially engineered inequality - the simple fact of the matter is that women have a stronger voice for morality. We need to use it, simply because it's there, and it's available for our use.

It's not about whose job it is, and it's not an excuse for men to be less than women, or a promise that women will always be held to a higher standard than men. It's a tool to be used in a very good cause. So, [to me:] stop complaining about the double standard and do the job using the tools you have. It's everybody's job, and you don't get points for worrying about the fairness of it all and who has to do more of what. You get points for how well you get the job done.


So, today I'm thankful for that epiphany. And, as an overarching theme, I'm thankful for epiphanies in general, and the ability to be instructed and learn things about life and truth.

PS: Oh, and as a side note, I've recently realized worrying about gender equality is petty. Very petty. If I need an injustice to worry about, I can focus on child abuse or human trafficking.

November 25th

Today I'm thankful that it's Carl's last day of classes before the holiday. He needs the break, and I'm more than excited for him to have the break.

Also, he'll be home more, and I can see him more.

And that is awesome. :)

November 24th

Today I'm thankful I teach the 4 year olds at church.

I know I complain about the lessons a lot - and I haven't found much about trying to grill a boring lesson into 4 year old minds to be thankful for, but I really love working with those kids.

Today was super chill. We talked about Thanksgiving and I drew on the chalkboard, and then we made "Thankful" books. After that we played with toys and stapled paper in random places just for the fun of it. This is the kind of day I love, where we're just playing and enjoying it. The kids are adorable, and are always begging, "Can we go to class now???" It makes me feel like a success, even if they don't retain squat of the lessons. We're having fun, and enjoying church. If I can make the kids excited to come to church, then I feel like I've done the job I'm supposed to do.