The Fine Art of Not Exploding

I am a masterpiece of self-control, a walking seminar on emotional regulation, a hard-earned PhD in keeping my mouth shut when Brad from accounting explains why he can't use the printer for the seventeenth time this week.

My jaw is a steel trap, my tongue a trained seal that performs amazing feats of staying exactly where it belongs instead of lashing out with the precision of a surgeon wielding nothing but brutal honesty and an encyclopedic knowledge of everyone's most irritating habits.

I am Zen incarnate, a Buddha in business casual.

Serenity now.

My face is Switzerland— neutral, pleasant, giving nothing away while inside my head I'm running a full-scale production of Hamilton where every song is just me screaming "ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?" in increasingly creative harmonies.

I breathe deeply. I count to ten. I count to twenty. I count to potato because numbers have lost all meaning and I'm pretty sure I'm having an aneurysm from the sheer effort of not telling Ashley that her "devil's advocate" routine makes me want to advocate for actual devils because at least they're honest about being terrible.

My therapist says I'm making progress. My therapist has never met Ashley.

I practice mindfulness, which mostly means I'm mindfully aware of exactly how much I want to throw my laptop out the window and follow it with a primal scream that would make a howler monkey jealous.

My inner voice has become a sports commentator: "And here she goes again, folks, biting her tongue with the grace of a swan and the internal fury of a thousand white-hot, burning suns. Will she make it through this day without snapping? The crowd holds its breath!"

I am a pressure cooker disguised as a person, a champagne bottle pretending to be a soothing cup of tea, a volcano holding a "World's Best Employee" mug and hoping nobody notices the smoke.

But then, oh then, I get home and my cat knocks over one single pen and I absolutely lose it, ranting at this bewildered furry creature about quarterly reports and passive-aggressive emails and how MAYBE if people could just USE THEIR WORDS like functioning adults instead of communicating through interpretive sighs and mysterious sticky notes, the world would be a better place.

My cat, unimpressed, knocks over another pen.

This is fine. I am fine. We are all fine here.

Is something burning? Do you smell toast?

Tomorrow I will try again to be the composed, professional person I pretend to be, and not the feral gremlin who lives in my chest and keeps a running list of everyone's crimes against common sense.

But tonight, tonight I write angry poems about the Herculean effort it takes to be nice when what I really want to do is shake people and ask them if they've considered thinking even just once before they speak.

The cat knocks over a third pen.

I respect that. At least one of us is living authentically.