A Year without Men by Allison Carmen

Author:Allison Carmen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510764132
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7: February

Respond—Don’t React: You Are Not Too Emotional

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

—attributed to the work of Viktor Frankl

***

AS I write this chapter, I am laughing. If I hadn’t lived through this year, I am not sure I could believe everything that happened to me. In February, right around Valentine’s Day, I was cleaning out the side table next to what had been my husband’s side of the bed, and I found a Valentine’s Day card that he never gave me. It read, “To My Darling Wife on Valentine’s Day.”

At first, it felt like someone was playing a trick on me, but there it was. I have no idea if he bought the Valentine’s Day card last year and never gave it to me, or if it was one from long ago. The drawer was pretty messy. The drawer also contained the poem I wrote to him for his birthday the May before he left and the one he wrote to me for my birthday. I had shoved these in the drawer after he made his exit, and seven months later, they were shocking to read. His poem to me said, “I love you more and more each day.” Why did he write that if he was contemplating leaving me? And why was there an empty Valentine’s Day card in his drawer? Had he planned that far ahead, even though he was halfway out the door when he bought it?

I became consumed with anger. All I wanted to do was text him my worst thoughts. All the horrible things I thought about him as a man, as a husband, and as a parent. So much rage boiled up inside me that I felt like I had a temperature. As I grabbed my cell phone to launch one of the most epic spews of anger and hatred I would ever make in my life, I remembered one of my favorite quotes of all time: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Immediately, on remembering these words, I was able to ask myself, “How will my actions serve me?”

I knew I was reacting, not responding. A reaction sometimes reflects our true feelings. But when we react, our emotions can come out in really bad ways. Other times, we are just reacting out of a bad habit, and our reaction doesn’t reflect how we truly feel. Our reactions do not always serve us and often lead us in the wrong direction. Instead, when we are responsive, we take the time to understand how we feel, discover our actual needs, and find an appropriate action. When we take the time to be more responsive, we end up where we need to be.

This was the night when I started a practice of self-texting. In other words, texting my feelings and emotions to myself.

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