Circling the Emotional Drain

Anne: Hello. Welcome to Coffee, Tea, and Consciousness. I want to say "conversation" every time. I am Anne.

Mel: Every time. I'm Mel. Welcome.

Anne: Welcome back.

Mel: Thanks for joining us. Today we are gonna talk about — what were we talking about today, Annie?

Anne: Well, there's one thing I want to hit on before we get into the one. So — I'm writing a letter to my husband.

Mel: Give it to us.

Anne: So that I can explain things to him, to open his brain, so it doesn't feel like I'm attacking him. Because I do know the way I speak sometimes feels like you're being attacked. I hear that, I understand it. So I thought, let's lessen the blow and do it in the form of a letter. His big thing is — when I'm working through feelings of shit I've swallowed for years, and it's backing up like the sewer system, he gets angry. He's like, "You're bringing up shit from twenty-six years ago, obviously nothing good has ever happened." When it dawned on me — we never swallow the happy memories. We swallow the shit that makes us sad, that makes us angry, that triggers us somehow. That's what comes up when you're healing from whatever you're healing from.

Mel: Yeah, that's pretty good.

Anne: Right after I wrote it, he calls. I swear, it's funny how that happens — I really thought I wasn't gonna talk to him until who knows when.

Mel: Well, that happens. I had just blocked my mom on my phone, and Jimmy brought in the mail and handed me mail that needs to go to her. I was like — you gotta be kidding me.

Anne: We just blocked the bitch. Now get in contact with her. Damn it.

Mel: Now I'm gonna have to make contact. That is funny how it does happen like that. I will say — I used to assume my action was wrong right before that. Now I almost feel like it's a little joke from the universe saying, "Hey, friend — are you gonna keep doing the thing you feel you still need to do?" It used to be, I'd think, "My God, I definitely shouldn't have blocked her, I screwed up, I'm gonna overcorrect." Now I'm like — nope. I think you're just giving me an opportunity to say I can still give her that, and not take in all the contact she wants every day.

Anne: Or you could just wait until you have contact with her on Thursday.

Mel: Right, because I have this idea that as long as I've got the energetic ability, I'm gonna reach out to her on a specific day of the week. Hopefully if I'm not being bombarded by constant attempted contact, my reserves will be there so I can. I do want to have enjoyable experiences. But Lord give me grace, I can't do it when I feel like I want to punch you in the neck because you won't leave me alone for ten minutes. Ten contacts in a day is a lot when there's nothing wrong — especially when there were eight yesterday, especially when I've asked for just a minute of reprieve.

Anne: And when she bombards the kids or Jimmy — it's not just "she sent you ten texts," it's she's now made calls to other family members to get in contact with you.

Mel: Right. When she's not getting what she wants from me, she does that. Our daughter Molly's like, "I don't know what Mom is doing today, she obviously doesn't want to tell you or she'd answer the phone." Then she'll text me — "Grandma keeps contacting me."

Anne: Did you say, block it, Molly, block it?

Mel: I did say, if you feel it's right for you —

Anne: Give her a good old block.

Mel: It's okay. Again — I used to think, and we talked about this, this is gonna be a Tuesday–Thursday drop because we're not quite done with what we were going on earlier. There was an idea, a topic.

Anne: About patterns.

Mel: Recognizing patterns — of experiences, of emotions. Because I was noticing I tend to — I wouldn't say overgive, I just don't mind giving. It doesn't make me feel bad. And in addition to not minding giving, I also don't need you to fall all over yourself in appreciation. I don't want that. I don't need a note, a card, a letter. I don't need you to tell me every time you use it, "I love it so much." No — I just give it, and it's gone.

Anne: I have something to add. I have an easier time giving to strangers than to people I know.

Mel: Why?

Anne: I think it's because I don't want to be disappointed. It's like giving your kids money but having an idea of where you'd want it spent, and then they don't spend it there. I've gotten over that, but there's something there. We borrowed money from Tony's sister for airfare for our honeymoon. We had other things come up, and granted we eventually paid her back, but not fast enough. It made it crystal clear — you don't lend money to friends or family. You just say it's gone, I guess.

Mel: When I was a kid, my mom had a notebook. If we borrowed ten dollars and twenty-two cents, it went in her notebook — a page with my name on it, all of us kids had a page. At some point she'd say, "You owe me X, Y, and Z." There isn't anything wrong with doing it that way. But I was a kid at the time, and I always thought — if I want to give you a gift, I'd rather give it to you as a gift than with strings attached. I've taken that too far the other way. The pattern I noticed: I'd give things, and they'd be — I don't know if "abused" is the word, but. We paid a large portion of our son and daughter-in-law's expenses. That's fine. But it became this constant thing — not "I need more," more like — I guess I got what I asked for, which is I gave it and it was gone. I took it so far that I gave it and it was gone off everyone's mind. So when we were treated poorly in some instances, and if we didn't then give something else they wanted, because we'd already given — it was "you do nothing for us." That's not true. I do some stuff. I'm just not gonna do that specific thing.

Anne: Then you're the jerk.

Mel: Right. Like — hey, we gave this amount for the venue, this was the dollar figure we said we'd pay, and now we're not paying for everything else. If you want more, you gotta do it yourself. And then, "you do nothing for us." Well, that isn't true. I've had this with my mom too — "I'm willing to come get you Sunday, you can spend the day, but I'm taking you home at the end of the day." Then it's, "When are you gonna do it again? Are you ever gonna do it again?" I don't know. If you keep this up, I might not. "You never come get me." You're here right now. I'm literally taking you home because it's the end of the day and I want to go to bed. It's never enough. And I'm mostly not even upset about giving at the outset — I don't want you falling all over yourself saying "you do so much," no thank you, I don't want that. But can you recognize when I say no? I've done other things — babysitting the grandkids —

Anne: But that one just came back up with them again.

Mel: Yeah, "you never do it" — that's not even true. It's true the last few months because contact's been cut off right now, but — I don't know what that is. Is it lack of appreciation?

Anne: I wonder if you're giving them too much.

Mel: I don't want to beat you over the head with my notebook of everything I've done for you. That's not what I want to do. But I'd like to acknowledge I don't do nothing — I'm just not doing this one specific thing you want today. Maybe it boils down to fear — I don't want to be like my mom with her notebook. But because of that notebook — when you ask, and you know what's going in the notebook, you gotta really want to ask.

Anne: Well, it keeps you — what is it — accountable.

Mel: Accountable. And maybe I don't like holding people accountable. Maybe I'm afraid if I hold you accountable, you won't want a relationship with me. I never thought the way my mom did it was wrong — I just thought, I'm your kid, it's ten dollars. And I was never afraid to ask — believe me, I asked for probably too much. The notebook didn't slow Mel's roll down, I promise. There was no "I'm afraid it's gonna go in the notebook" — it was "fuck it, it's going in the notebook." Like when I was in church and realized I was never gonna be perfect, so I was definitely going to hell — I thought, then let's go all the way, motherfuckers. Let's do all the things. We're gonna get in trouble anyway, I'm already in the notebook, let's rack up the debt.

Anne: Okay — did you ever feel like your son, or your daughter-in-law, or your mom — like, "give me more, motherfuckers, you're not doing enough"?

Mel: Maybe. I'm human, I'm not opposed to receiving, so I'm sure there was a piece of that in hard times — "you could do more for us." But I also held myself accountable — you can't keep asking for everything forever. There's a point. Believe me, I asked a lot. But even I knew there was a point where it's like, hey, that might be going over the line. Maybe you need to look at how you're asking. Jimmy says I sometimes feel like a toddler.

Anne: My mom does it too — someone at the hospital would want her to pick up a shift, she didn't want to, she'd do it anyway, then be pissed she did.

Mel: Yeah, there's a pattern there. I used to notice — when I noticed resentment forming, I knew I'd gone too far in overgiving. I'd catch it: "ooh, you feel something — nope, let's look at where you've gone too far." But I do notice this pattern of mine — maybe it's about holding others to account. Maybe I never wanted to be held accountable myself. Patterns keep coming around until you find them.

Mel: Do you have patterns you notice, that you want to talk about?

Anne: The biggest one, and the one I'm working through now, is self-worth. The belief that the guy — my husband — goes to work, brings home a paycheck, so he deserves to go do whatever he wants, and I'll just pick up the slack on everything else. I made what he did more important than what I did.

Mel: I remember another pattern — when you were trying to use your voice. Remember the appliance people who didn't come fix things? Spirit will keep giving it to you in another way. That's part of why I journal — to see the pattern I keep repeating. If you notice a feeling or experience that keeps coming up, even if it doesn't look the same way twice, there's probably something still there.

Anne: We dealt with a refrigerator that took months to get the ice maker fixed, then a dishwasher that took three months, then a leak in the ceiling and getting the guy's crew out here. I look back and think — why did I even hire that guy, he wouldn't get off the phone. I'd asked for confirmation before hiring him, did my due diligence — but I still got screwed around enough that I finally said, either get somebody here tomorrow or I want my money back. He thought sending one guy would shut me up for a minute. You said two weeks, it's been a month. The dishwasher was the real stinker — it took Tony using his voice. He got on LinkedIn, found the CEO of the company, called him out. Within an hour we had a call.

Mel: He had to back you up.

Anne: Yeah.

Mel: We had a tree fall on our house — actually in the middle of it again, because Jimmy sometimes needs to use his voice. He'd hired a friend, insurance covered it, everything fine — but when they came to do the work, they weren't going to do everything on the quote. Jimmy's an engineer, he notices everything undone, even what he doesn't say out loud — out there marking pieces of siding with his pencil. He had to go to work during the day, so I'd sit out there watching the crew. The guy said, "You don't have to sit out here and watch me." Obviously I do. "I'm not gonna work under these conditions." Is that upsetting to you? Great — you want anybody confronted, call me, motherfucker, it's my greatest joy to get to confront. But it's not always right — I would do it all day, every day if given the opportunity. I ask Spirit — open that door so wide I know for sure it's you moving me, not just Mel. Case in point: I didn't get to go to my aunt's funeral, because if I had gone, I had things I wanted to say to my mom's side of the family, and Spirit didn't open that door. I told Spirit — if I'm supposed to go, make sure it's clearly you moving me, not just Mel wanting to say her piece. Something came up and I couldn't go that day.

Anne: Is this really what I'm supposed to do, or is this just me wanting to do it?

Mel: Exactly. The following year, another tree fell on the house. Different friend hired, we thought it'd be different — of course it is different, but it's the same energy. Jimmy's coworker calls it "circling the drain" — you're gonna circle that drain until you get it, however long it takes. It's been almost a year and it's still not fixed. We already have the insurance money, haven't even paid them — it's not that they took the money and ran, they're just not doing the work.

Anne: Can he go to somebody else, cut the friend out?

Mel: Maybe, and that might be what he ends up doing. But here's what I know — that ain't mine, and I'm not getting involved because I don't want to fuck it up. I'm waiting for whatever will move it forward. Knowing what part of this is mine — the easiest thing for me is to step in. Other people back up when someone gets aggressive; I'm like, come on, let's go at it, motherfucker. Jimmy's like, I'll just wait and see. It's not a calamity. We're friends, giving all the benefit of the doubt — it's not for me to say, "hey, you gonna get that done?" What's in here for me? Shut the fuck up, Mel, that's not yours. There's a situation with Jimmy's dad right now — not mine either. I've said my piece to the family, but it's not mine to do, and I know it for sure.

Anne: And it's not yours to worry about getting screwed either.

Mel: No. I don't want to make a problem for myself or anyone else. Stay out, let it be. Even if it takes longer or gets harder in the long run — also fine. It's not for me. Knowing what's yours versus someone else's, when you're in it, is sometimes tricky.

Mel: Especially when you and Tony are both meant to learn to use your voices — whose turn is it this time?

Anne: Well — one of the things that's come up for me is my feeling that he puts his family in front of me and the kids. He came from a family where you don't tell them no, where guilting works — the Catholic guilt, I call it. Which is fine, but you now have responsibilities to this family too. He's never told them no. His niece was getting married — he'd just started a job, no vacation days built up yet, the wedding was all the way in Michigan, we're in Georgia. That was the first time he said we're not going, that I can remember. I thought it was ridiculous he'd even consider taking time off right after starting a job, but at the time he didn't know if he'd need to go to town, all these things — I said, just say no, it's not a big deal. He finally did. Kudos, twenty-six years later.

Mel: But I'll say — when they're coming this time, he's taking time off at a job he just started.

Anne: Two days. We were talking about a small trip, just the two of us, and he's giving up a day for them. That pisses me off to no end.

Mel: That might be for you to say something about — knowing he didn't do it that time, and now, in just a few days, he's doing it. Might be, Spirit will just keep bringing it back around no matter how long it takes.

Anne: Here's another one. His mom does the "we stay in Florida in the winter, you should come down" thing. I don't buy into it because we've done it and it feels like we're trapped. Tony falls for it every time, tries to accommodate. He drives eleven hours down there, and nobody wants to drop their plans once he arrives. His sister, who's nearby, doesn't bother coming over — his dad "didn't feel good." He and our daughter ended up going to the beach by themselves, went shopping by themselves. What's the point of going? Every time we see them — "you should come down." No. He only gets so many vacation days, I don't want them wasted like that.

Mel: So — what's your part in this? What are you circling, that's been going on all these years? You already know what it is — it's saying the things, right?

Anne: Yeah.

Mel: And he still gets to do what he wants — he's an adult, a human.

Anne: My thing is, I leave a lot of stuff — in my head I already know, "we ain't going." But he has to come to that conclusion himself. I leave a lot of things having to do with his side of the family in his court, because it is his family, and there's a part of me that doesn't want it held over my head later — "you should've gone, you told me not to."

Mel: But there needs to be something in there — because I think when Spirit keeps bringing it around, it's for us to find peace. You haven't found peace with this yet. So what is it, so you can find peace whether he goes or doesn't?

Anne: I feel like part of it is I feel like he's choosing them. His choice always goes back to them. I don't know that it's what he actually wants, but he does it out of guilt.

Mel: So what do you have to come to, for yourself? Is it still tied to worthiness — that you're worthy enough to be chosen first?

Anne: Yeah. A lot of this is about worthiness.

Mel: And it'll keep cycling. Spirit'll keep it up, those fuckers.

Anne: In all reality it shouldn't matter to me whether he goes or not —

Mel: Not that it shouldn't matter — when it's healed, it won't matter. It's supposed to matter until it's resolved. You can't resolve shit that feels okay right now, even if you don't like it.

Anne: That's true — because that's just hiding my feelings. Today I finally did say to him — I wrote him a letter to explain my feelings because he always feels attacked. There's a part of me that wants him to feel attacked, honestly — I held it back in the moment. But I thought, I came at him kind of hard yesterday, let me lighten the load, and if he wants to talk we can. I finally did say — it always feels to me like you put them first, over us.

Mel: Which is new. That's getting down another layer.

Anne: He finally said, "yeah, I'm a people pleaser, I have a hard time saying no."

Mel: To everyone other than you. He says yes to your daughter, yes to your son, no to you. I hate to be the bearer, but it's specifically not that he doesn't love you — of course not. It's about your self-worth.

Anne: It's my self-worth, and me saying, "hey, quit saying no to me and yes to everybody else."

Mel: And then — take this for what it's worth, because I love confrontation — I'd want to go to the ultimatum stage. Not "I'm gonna leave you," but "the credit card's getting cut off, you're not going." But please don't do what I say, that's just me. Maybe that's too hard, energetically. Maybe you're still at the stage of noticing — a new noticing, a new reckoning: I'm tired, my feelings are hurt. There might be more sadness and crying underneath that anger — getting to the bottom of the sorrow of not being chosen first. It feels terrible to not be chosen first.

Anne: Well, it's the same with my parents. My brother's the golden child. I even called them out on it as a teenager, in counseling — I said, I don't understand why you even had another kid, you had the one you wanted, why'd you go and fuck it up and have me? Am I just here to be your pain in the ass? That goes way back.

Mel: There's a stage — hey, I am worthy enough to be chosen first. There's gonna be a lot of sadness getting down to the barrel of what it felt like, all the times you weren't. I know you've cried about this for months on one level, but — you're fifty. That's fifty years of not feeling chosen first. That's a lot of sadness. You should be allowed to feel it.

Anne: It really is a lot.

Mel: Then the next level — you'll realize how important and worthy you are. If you're not done, don't worry, it'll come back around. Those bitches don't let loose until the shit's done.

Mel: Something a little lighter — this weekend Jimmy and I went to a concert. I love Andy Grammer's music, it's joy up and down my whole body, touches a well of joy very few other artists touch. We've seen him maybe four or five times. Looking back at the first time — my joy was much more subdued, matching Jimmy's energy instead of my own. The second time, I was in a phase of thinking I was "too much," assumed Jimmy didn't like it when I went "all Mel," so I barely let myself feel joy. Third time, with the kids — too loud for them, outdoors, daytime, easier for people to see you behaving like a lunatic, so I was more subdued. Then a smaller, more subdued one-man show.

Mel: This past weekend — Jimmy's birthday, our friends' twenty-second anniversary. We got t-shirts for the occasion. We got there, he came on stage — in the past everyone got up right away. This time, nobody stood — not me, not Jimmy, not our friends. I had to decide: am I gonna sit, or stand and let myself feel everything? Took about twenty or thirty seconds of bouncing in my seat before I stood up, tried to get others to join me, and then went full-on Mel-joy — dancing, arms up, screaming, not a great singer, but all-in. A couple other people were as into it as I was. There was a little kid behind me with what I assume was his mom, and Jimmy got concerned — "hey, that kid's behind you." I had a flash of "maybe I should slow my roll," but I thought — no, I paid for this ticket, they can stand up too. I let loose again. Of the four of us, I was the only one being that "insane." My point is — I saw the pattern of all the ways I've subdued myself in the past to match "normal," so I'm not a bother to other people. And then swinging too far the other way, watching how others behave and mimicking it. Sometimes that's reasonable — other times, no, you're here for you too, go all out.

Anne: That's society as a whole — we all pretend to be a certain thing, and can only deviate so much off the track or you're "weird."

Mel: Right — and how does it feel, when you do deviate? Even for me, in the moment, I recognized — I am a fucking lot, jumping around like a jackrabbit, screaming like a banshee. Way too much. But exactly the amount of much I actually was in that moment. I watched Jimmy be exactly his level — it was lovely to see. We're not all supposed to be the same. How fucking boring would that be.

Anne: We put ourselves in this small box.

Mel: He was being the amount of joy he was in that moment, which was lovely — not as disruptive for the people behind us, but up, moving, having a great time. And when we left, he wasn't embarrassed to walk back to the Airbnb holding my hand. We also passed a strip club on the way out, and I said, half-joking — should we go, I've never been, I'm curious how it works. No — obviously they weren't going.

Anne: They ain't going. I don't know why you thought they would.

Mel: They're heterosexual men, with their wives. And the one wife pushing for it is me. Not that it was ever about bringing anyone home — that wasn't part of the plan — but I did say, we're here, we could just go for a minute. Jimmy said part of him worried I'd end up on stage. My son said maybe fifty-fifty, depending what music was playing. The bouncers would've taken me down — you can't just have strangers walk up and start taking off clothes. Anyway — it's funny, this expectation of how to behave, and how to let yourself behave the way that actually feels best. Even at the first concert, I was being the most I could feel comfortable being at the time. It's changed over time — I've gotten freer, more willing to show my true personality in moments where it isn't going to cause real problems for myself or my family. But in that moment, this still might be hard for other people to watch, and I'm gonna act like a fool anyway.

Anne: They can always act like they don't know you.

Mel: It's tricky, especially when during one song I literally grabbed Jimmy's arm and put it around me — that's also a little tricky. We've learned to not just expect our needs to be met, but to ask for them — instead of expecting him to know I wanted his arm around me in that moment, helping him do it felt lovely. And his willingness to keep it there, not pull away.

Anne: That's making me think back to the whole "chosen first" thing. Second or third grade, field trip, my friend and another girl. I got picked first to choose my buddy for the trip and couldn't make up my mind — so stupid. They said we'll come back to you. My friends ended up picking each other. Nobody left — except one girl, who was special needs. I remember thinking, what the fuck just happened, I could've picked anybody. Just another opportunity to see the pattern of being chosen first.

Mel: Yeah, just another experience, another chance to see it.

Anne: Then there's the part about parents deserving respect, all the societal norms — his parents deserve respect, mine do too, to an extent — but the whole guilt thing. I think it's stemming from all of that.

Mel: It matters. It totally matters. It's hard to acknowledge our own feelings and that they're valid, let alone being vulnerable enough to share them with someone else, and then wanting them to give us space to have them without criticizing or shutting us down. I remember going through something with my mom, telling Jimmy I'd come out of our room when I was done — three days in there. He asked, "are you done?" Nope. I'm in here, and I'm going to be sad, for the little girl who didn't get loved the way she needed. Not that my mom didn't do her best — it's not about her, or them, or him ever. It's about me. I'm not gonna be done until I get to the bottom of the well I have. I'm sorry if that's annoying to everyone else in my life, but I'm not leaving until I feel it all the way.

Anne: It's hard, though. I didn't think Tony would call today, that's why I wrote the letter. He calls, I answer, try to explain, and he says, "well, I have a complaint." I don't feel like these are complaints — this is the way I feel, and I'm trying to heal it. It isn't the same as him saying "that guy should've used his blinker" — it's not that small, it's built up over years, and it's hard to explain to somebody who doesn't want to feel any of it at all. It's not that I'm better than him — I'm at a different place of understanding. He's very surface — "that's how I was raised, that's all we did." Well, just because that's how you were raised doesn't mean you can't grow. Why can't you change it? At some point we might have to have a reckoning — I'm tired of being surface, tired of the bullshit layer, it means nothing.

Mel: It's hard to live in that world. We've been going through this in our own ways for a long time, and it still feels like we're in the same place we were when this first started.

Anne: It does. But we were so focused on other bullshit, we never really touched the healing part. We'd nick into it, then jump off. I remember you going through more emotional stuff and I was like — I don't know, I obviously wasn't ready, I was in the "Tony, I have a complaint" phase.

Mel: I've always been extremely emotional — recognizing and feeling emotions has always been a thing for me.

Anne: Whereas I felt like I had to shut mine down, because they were never validated. It was "shut up."

Mel: Mine were always terrible, annoying, too much — but I did feel them, and I threw them around like cannonballs. Jimmy would say he doesn't know how to express feelings like I do. I don't think anyone should be expected to express them exactly like someone else, but if we can learn to express them in the best way we can — that's part of why we started listening to Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart, to build a common language. We'd talk past each other — I'd say something and he'd hear something else, and vice versa. Sometimes what he called a feeling was actually a complaint. We needed to go back to basics — the toddler feeling wheel. Happy, sad, disappointed. The way he was raised, feelings weren't talked about at all.

Anne: I think our whole generation didn't talk about feelings much, period.

Mel: We definitely talk about it more than our parents did. And our kids talk about it more than us — I've actually caught myself saying, "we do have to do more than just talk about our feelings."

Anne: No way. Do they throw that back in your face?

Mel: Probably — sometimes it's "can't we just do a puzzle, I'm tired of talking about feelings." Apparently sometimes it's too much even for me. Fascinating.

Anne: Sometimes it is hard to listen to other people's feelings — my daughter was a lot like me with the crying, and eventually you hit a point where there's nothing you can do that would satisfy them right now.

Mel: Can I make a prediction? Our daughter's been circling a drain of her own — a type of mistreatment that keeps going around and around, always ending up bringing bad stuff onto their laps. I think she's almost there — about to stop suppressing her feelings. Let them fly, motherfucker. Let the shit fall where it may, wherever, at me, at someone else, I don't care — but open the vault and let it explode. You can see the volcano bubbling. She's held it in long enough. She was always a crier, couldn't express emotions any other way, so she'd just cry — it's unfortunate looking back, but there's power in her, and something underneath ready to come out. I'm down for it, even if it hits me in the face — I'm sure there's pieces of volcano lava I deserve to get smashed with, I'm a human parent who's fucked it up more times than I can count.

Anne: I've always told my kids — I'm sorry, you're probably gonna need therapy at some point, I apologize, I'll come to a session if you want to chew me out.

Mel: I'll take the blame — take responsibility for my part, which isn't the same when they're children, but as adults it is. It's something to watch her get there, and I love it, I'm so down for it. Even if I get singed in the face, or Jimmy singes me with his frustration — it's okay, I'm a big girl, I can take it. I'm excited for them to get to the place where they can finally state what's true for them — even "you fucked us in a million ways" — yes, it's true, and also, I never not loved you. I may not have shown it the way you needed. But finally you're gonna let your shit fly, and I appreciate that for all the people in my life. Please remind me of that when they're throwing their lava balls at me and I'm dodging and ducking and can't quite take it.

Mel: Well, this is our conversation around circling the drain, apparently — letting an experience circle itself around until we can see what it is we need to see.

Anne: Yep. And we never swallow or stuff happy feelings — it's always the shitty ones.

Mel: Always the shittier ones. Because we don't want to feel them.

Anne: And Spirit would say — they're not shitty, they're just a feeling. Let it flow.

Mel: They're not shitty, they're just a feeling. Who's to say that's wrong? Remember that time they were talking about Mel's emotional roller coaster, always emotioning all over the place — who says her ups and downs are wrong? Let her ride that wave. There's just a lot, for everyone, and for her. I'd like to be a little more even, which I am now, and it does feel better.

Mel: Well, good luck to you, Annie — you've got some days coming up, some stuff to work through.

Anne: So there you have it, folks. Oh my god — take it easy on me, please.

Mel: Take it easy on both of us. All right — if you like it, don't forget to give us a follow. If you're willing to leave a review — but not if it sucks, keep those to yourself.

Anne: Five stars, please.

Mel: Alright, okay friends — I want to be first, I'm choosing you first, Annie.

Anne: Choose me first. I want to be chosen first.

Mel: All right, okay friends. We'll see you later.

Anne: Bye.