Well, I hate to be such a depresso-blogger, but I have to get this out somewhere.

I attended another stressful meeting this evening. At church. It involved money. There were words said. At one point, the phrase "Shove it" was used (yes, in church, and I'm still rather scandalized by that) and someone left the room.

And I sat there, as the whole thing escalated, feeling tears pricking at my eyes. I am not directly involved - at least, not in the sense of being one of the parties in the disagreement - but I still just felt, I don't know, lost and helpless and scared. I think the thought of "another church split" is coming crossed my mind. And I also thought about my meeting of earlier this week, where I walked out feeling like I was going to vomit.

(And I also found out that a friend of mine - well, an online friend but I still regard her as a friend - may have fairly serious cancer. So that piece of information and the real estate it takes up in my mind and soul also affected me).

I don't deal well at all with confrontation and disagreement. Part of me curls up into a tiny ball to ward off the blows I expect to come next. I do not know why that is. In my family, disagreements or problems were generally handled by quiet discussion, or if someone got REALLY steamed, their saying "I need ten minutes to cool down" and quietly walking away. I suppose it's that I've never had enough experience with anger, real anger that blows up and then blows over, and so I expect any anger to be prelude to a war.

I think it was a stressful meeting all around. I don't THINK I'm being overly sensitive.

At one point, the minister himself was in tears. (Which just made it worse for me. As anti-feminist of it is of me, seeing a man cry triggers alarm bells deep in my brain: This Is Really A Very Big Honking Deal.)

I'm just carrying too much around. I've been near tears numerous times this week and it's because I'm just overwhelmed and have lost much of my natural resilience. And I've let myself get over-tired. (I think I am going to do the crossing-off-days-until-S.Y.G.-I.G.H.(*)-day).

It also doesn't help that I'm somewhat of an empath. When someone around me is distressed, even if they're not verbalizing it, I feel it. And I feel that sense of unexplainable malaise until I figure out who it is and more or less what's wrong. And there's been an awful lot of malaise floating around, and it sticks to me. And I can't wash it off or think it off, usually the only way to get rid of it is to work in the garden, or work on a quilt, or find something really absorbing to watch on television while I knit, or go to bed and read a book, and give it time to go away on its own.

It also doesn't help when one spends a lot of time dealing with adults that act like children. Which is how it seems to have been this week.

I don't know. I am feeling better as I type this out, partly because the whole situation is receding in my mind, and partly because I've verbalized precisely the things bothering me. I just hope that when I get into bed tonight, it doesn't come all back to sit on my chest, the way phlegm suddenly fills your nose when you have a cold and try to lie down and sleep.