What a State I'm In
I've gotta tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign- From “Warning Sign”, Coldplay
If you are a regular Trader Joe’s shopper, you are very familiar with their killer playlists. If you don’t find yourself singing at least one song to yourself while picking up a box of Mango Creamsicles and a plant, you’re doing TJ’s wrong. But this isn’t a blog about TJ’s playlists, though I could wax poetic about their song choices for pages. It’s what happened during the jams that stuck with me.
As I was picking up food for the week, a mother with a young son walked in front of me, the young boy holding on to the cart in a way I remember doing with my mother. As we hit a bottleneck in front of the meat section, Madonna’s “Celebrate” started to play, and the boy let go of the cart and started to dance while looking up at his mom. His mother, instead of forcing him back to his position as cart-holder, asked him, if he felt like dancing and nodding yes, he let himself go, having a good time, a party of one with the world’s best hype woman. And then it happened - he tripped over his own feet and stumbled into the cart, hitting his little arm. I think he stunned himself a little. His mom asked him if he was alright, following up with a question that made me stop in my tracks. She asked him if he needed to check in with his body to ensure he was okay, and then they could either keep dancing or continue shopping. She told him that it was okay if he felt a little embarrassed, that it was human.
It was at that moment that I realized that I don’t think I ever learned to do that as a kid, to check in on my emotional or physical safety after a moment of pain or a stumble. This is not the fault of my parents at all. Still, my instincts have always told me that if I stumbled or fell, or embarrassed myself in any way the best way is to straighten myself up and keep moving, keeping any feelings of embarrassment to myself until I can punish myself for being human in private. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a moment, at THAT moment, to check in with myself to make sure that I was okay.
My inner voice always cautioned me against making it worse by creating a spectacle of myself for daring to have feelings that may be inconvenient to people around me, people who, in reality, probably weren’t paying close attention to me anyway. If anything, I should make sure to laugh at myself in order to make people around me comfortable with judging me for being such a klutz. The crazy thing is that I’m more than likely okay to dust myself off and keep going, but the rush to remove yourself from the scene to deal with yourself in private makes it hard to realize that. All you can think about is not embarrassing yourself further.
I think that is why I have such a hard time showing strong emotion in public. I am fantastic at putting on a smile after making a mistake or facing trauma. If you’ve ever seen me cry (and there aren’t a lot of you), you’ve also seen me fighting with myself to keep those emotions down, making any tears that appear tears of frustration and anger, not sadness. I remember a moment at work, not too long ago, when I fought myself so hard that I made myself sick. What if I had put my own peace of mind first, and let myself just feel that moment? What if, before even considering that I might look silly, consider why the atmosphere isn’t doesn’t feel like a safe space to express the emotions that I need to express and take a moment to check in with myself and advocate for my emotional safety? Can I hold myself to the same standard? Am I a person that others can trust to give them room to ensure their own safety and peace? I’d like to think so because I know how it feels to need that person.
The central lesson I got from this little boy and his mother is that my feelings are mine, and I have a right to make sure that I am okay even though I may think that it will inconvenience someone else. I have the ability, and the responsibility, to check in with myself first, and only I can really decide if I’m ready to keep on dancing in the meat aisle.
