Que Sera Sera

I don't know much about electrical wiring. I flip the switch and the lights come on and that's good enough for me. But I get the concept of a fuse. If something goes wrong in said electrical wiring and too much electricity tries to go through a wiring that isn't supposed to get that much, it goes POP and "blows a fuse" and the entire thing stops working, everything along that wire, that is. Interestingly enough, when someone loses their temper, they are often said to have blown their fuse.

I have a fuse on my emotional wiring circuit. And when too much tries to go through my wires at the same time, I simply stop feeling for a while until the circuit breaker can be reset. Lots of things can trip my breaker like trying to plug in too many things on the same outlet or trying to plug in something that isn't working properly, or dropping the hair dryer in the bathwater and causing a surge. Even lightning can pop a breaker, though it's pretty rare to be struck by lightning. I don't know if it's true of non-metaphorical fuses or not, but turning a light on and off over and over very quickly also blows my fuses.

When my emotional circuits have a blown fuse, a tired sort of numbness comes over me. It's kind of relaxing, not being constantly bombarded by feelings, especially contradictory ones. When it doesn't matter how I react to a situation, it will be the wrong way, it's easier to just not react. It's like relaxing when I'm very cold in order to stop shivering.

But blowing a fuse has other, not so good consequences.

One such "side effect" is loss of feeling good about things too. In order to shut off the bad feelings, oftentimes, the good ones go too. I'm not feeling bad that Hubby got his new toy finally, but I'm not feeling good either. I'm not feeling pessimistic about the whole Join-The-Railroad thing, but I'm not optimistic either. This makes it easier to fake emotions since I don't have to conquer the legitimate ones first but it's like looking at a rainbow in a stormy sky.... in greyscale.

Another unintended result is in my writing... it stops. I haven't written fiction since the last day of March and anyone who knows me knows how totally whack that really is. I'm not writing it and I'm not critiquing it. I'm still reading it but even my enjoyment of that is severely compromised. I once went three years without doing any serious writing. It was dreadful and I don't want to repeat it.

One other main area that is affected is my empathy. By turning off my feelings, it is harder for me to instinctively relate to other people's feelings. Suddenly I have to work at empathy instead of it being automatic. That sucks.

And last but not least, I have trouble with checking out or fading back. I detach way too easily and take my own sweet time coming back. I let others run the show and I don't much care that I do. They can handle it. They've been doing this my whole life. Practically NO ONE can tell in the least bit when it's happening so......

Que sera sera - about everything.....