Owning emotions

I ordered a book in October last year. 

It was written by a singer songwriter I like and I pre-ordered it because she was self-publishing and I wanted to support her.

Anyway, she’d been touring and the UK publication was delayed. But it got to April and the book hadn’t arrived.

I wrote to check in with her on what had happened. 

Apparently I’d ordered through the US link not the UK link so my order had got lost but she promised to fix it and get a copy out to me.

Great.

I went on holiday at the start of May, and expected to find the book waiting when I got back.

It wasn’t.

I got an email from the artist.  “Just checking if you ever got your book because I got an email from someone who says she received your package. Here’s the address where I sent the book, is it right?”

“No,” I replied. “I don’t have the book. But I see you sent it to number 6 while I’m at number 9. That’s OK, I can just pop across the road and knock on the door.”

Of course this was the week of school holidays and number 6 were away.

But a week later they were home. And there I was knocking on the door.

(I tried the Ring doorbell but it did not prompt any response so I had to go analogue.)

A woman and her small daughter answered the door.

I introduced myself, explaining that I live an number 9 across the road and I think you may have received a book for me?

“Ah yes!” She said. “Let me go get it.”

She apologised for having opened the package but she hadn’t looked at the name until she realised the contents weren’t for her. (Probably when she saw the book was signed “To Michelle.”)

“I tried to find you on the street WhatsApp group. Are you on the street WhatsApp group?”

Silence. Tumbleweeds. A dog barks in the distance.

I can only imagine I pulled a tight twisted face as I said, “No. No I’m not.”

She didn’t offer to add me and I was too upset to think straight and ask.

In the few steps across the street I found myself getting angry. Then a voice in my head said “You’re getting upset over nothing.”

No, I mentally replied, I am justifiably angry about this.

I went home and recounted this to Husband.

“Why the hell are we not on the WhatsApp group? We’ve lived here for 24 years, before WhatsApp was even a thing!”

Later that evening I was still angry and upset about not being on the WhatsApp group.

I said this out loud, to further own my feelings. And also a little bit to check that this is a valid reaction, a valid way to feel.

“I’m still angry too,” said Husband.

What upset me most was that after living on this street for 24 years, no one knows my name. I had sudden future visions of a  “her body lay undiscovered for months” scenario.

What also upset me was the voice in my head that told me to stop reacting.  I know that voice. I heard it a lot growing up.

“Stop overreacting.”

“Stop making a fuss over nothing.”

“Stop behaving like that.”

Here I am at this point in my life, and the first reaction to an intense emotion is to hear about voice tell me to can it, shut it down, deny it, not show it.

It feels good to tell that voice to shut up and to let the feelings be felt.

p.s. I am sure the street WhatsApp group is as full of nonsense and irrelevance and banality and stupidity as all WhatsApp groups are. And I’m sure I will roll my eyes in frustration and annoyance at what people feel is fit to share. But being wilfully (?) excluded from that group – to not even be given the option to mute the noise – when I have lived on this street for so long? Who decides who gets to join and who is excluded?