Drama Queen, who me?

I don't think I'm a fanciful person. Am I drama queen? Depends on the connotation of that phrase. In the good sense - yes - I am a passionate person and I experience emotions, I don't suppress them. In the bad sense - I should think not! I don't create drama, I don't meddle in people's business, I do on occasion overreact - but usually those are for very short periods of time...I digress.

My dad-by-marriage called tonight - he never calls me - so needless to say I was slightly alarmed. He begins the conversation, "Don't be alarmed, but your mom is in the hospital." (Sentences with buts, never end well for me...I have a whole history of bad news brought to me by a variation of those very words and each and every time the news takes me to the very place the person saying those words didn't want me to go.) It's my mom, she's never sick, of course I'm slightly alarmed. It's gallstones, there will be some more tests tomorrow to determine if she will be having surgery. I'm worried. I know I'd feel better if I was geographically closer to her. Then I could see her and I'd stop imagining the worst. But I don't panic, instead I call my love at work. I figured if I hear his voice, I won't freak out.

So I call him, and he can detect the verge of panic in my voice - well that and I say, "I'm scared." He assures me she's fine and I say I know this but I'm still scared. In retrospect, it is one of those Mars and Venus things going on in the conversation. (OMG I just used that term...anyway) I was calling to hear - in a calming voice - something along the lines of, "Don't worry honey, everything will be alright, I'll be home soon and I'll give you lots of hugs and kisses to reassure you that all is right with the world." (But of course much more eloquently.) I hear instead that I must realize that my mother isn't getting any younger and people's bodies start to fall apart and that it will probably be happening to him in a decade or so, and its a part of life and that I shouldn't be a drama queen. (This isn't a direct quote, I'm paraphrasing, note the lack of quotation marks around the sentence.) Essentially its the same thing, in his male loveable way he was trying to use reason to get me to see the logic of the situation, in order to keep me calm and not to worry about a situation I can't do anything about. It does make sense. But emotions don't make sense and sometimes you have to experience the emotion before you can see the "reality" of the situation.

I need to go through a little bit of panic, that initial shock. It is someone I love dearly and she's sick and I can't be with her - of course I'm going to worry and be alarmed. I need to have those 5-10 minutes, then I'll look at it differently. If the panic lasted longer than that, by all means - give me a dose of "reality" - My friends in college were quite good at those, I still think Margaret's responses are still my favorite - "Knock it off " which was usually followed by an elbow to the boob or her "angry" face and a threat to be kicked in the knee caps. Ah, fond memories...I digress again.

Well, when my love gets home I think I'll give him a hug call him, a big poo-poo head and turn in for the night. Blogging seems to have taken the, so called "drama queen" out of me for the evening.