Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die

When I first read this I had to walk away from it for awhile. I actually didn't think I'd be able to leave a comment. I'm glad that the day went well for you, but I sympathize with the comments that would have been better left unsaid. I had my breakdown at work in front of my boss, my coworkers, several close friends, and some other people. I had been known as the "put together woman" who life was all about perfection and control. I dissolved into a blob of hysteria on the floor. It was ugly. Very ugly. People were shocked. People were speechless. I should have sold tickets to the show. The comments that were made to me in the days that followed were not nice. My friends abandoned me. I will probably tell the story here some time, but I'm not ready yet. I just want you to know that understand what those empty first days at home are like. I want you to know I understand how thoughtless comments hurt. It's been a few years and I still struggle with the memory of that day.

I feel for you and @rainingviolets as to what she wrote.  I had to read it a few times not cause it wasn't understandable but I'm just feeling sad today and enervated.  I don't blame you for keeping a mask.  I've been doing it forever, at work/school, in public.  I'm a very private person, it's not just the reaction that I don't want to have to manage.  I know how it feels to lose control when you so desperately don't want to.  The fact (of course) that it wasn't your fault, or anyone's, or rainingviolets', doesn't mean that you or I don't hate when it happens.  That awful moment of exposure, of vulnerability is the pits.  I've lost that mask at different points but not at work.  At work, I'd get my chest totally flooded when unrealistic (and unfair) demands would be made on me.  I couldn't type, do my work, I'd be paralyzed, unable to think my way out of it.

Listen, I'm here for the two of you.   You can say what you want, how much want, how little you want.  Don't think for a minute I wouldn't understand.  I think it's gross that friends would abandon someone, just when the going gets rough or is at its roughest.  Then what's point of friends. 

That whole thing about getting out of the hole  . . . I think that comment is the most patronizing one of all.  I've gotten: pull yourself together!  Yeah, uh, like to, ya wanna tell me how (sigh).