self-reflection

Somewhere along the line, I became a really grumpy person. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty happy, optimistic, and easygoing. OK, maybe not easygoing. But generally happy and upbeat, yes.

Lately, though, I find myself grumpy and annoyed at the smallest things. I mean, I think three years ago I might have found them small. Now they are incidents worthy of an increase in blood pressure.

For instance, yesterday, I was picking up a couple of things from the grocery store and the man behind me was a mouth-breather. But not a normal mouth-breather; he was an expressive mouth-breather.

So, he’s huffing away behind me as the woman in front is being rung up, and suddenly I hear him exhale, “…fifteen…” We were in the express lane and he was, apparently, COUNTING her yogurts under (well, maybe NOT under) his breath. And then he kept huffing. Mouth breathing, almost wheezing, but not quite wheezing, over my shoulder. I moved forward and he let out a HUGE whoosh! of air, like I was inconveniencing him by making him move forward before he was ready, but he moved forward anyway, until he was so close to me that I could not only feel his breath on my neck but could also smell his body odor.

And I left the store IRATE. That stupid, smelly mouth-breathing, item-counting jackass! It just got under my skin.

Today, I found myself getting irate again (also at the grocery store) over something similarly underwhelming, and I stopped myself. I literally stopped myself, in the aisle where I was shopping, to take a deep breath and ask myself, “When did I become this person? This person who gets annoyed at every little thing, who loses her temper over the everday encounters?” I don’t know the answer, but I think at least part of it is that I’m not sure I know how to relax anymore.

I don’t like being this person. I don’t like being stressed and pissy. I want to enjoy my grocery shopping. I want to enjoy walking down the street. I want to ride the bus or the train without having to suppress the urge to throttle someone. And the funny thing is that part of me insists that it’s everyone else who is rude, or inconsiderate, or unmannered, and that my bitchiness is justified. Frankly, it probably is that other people are oblivious to me and my cart trying to go down the aisle, or get on the train, or check out at the store without my airspace being polluted. I’m just not convinced that makes it OK for me to lose it.

I want to be a happy and upbeat person again.