One for the ladies.

Okay, ladies. I gotta have a little female reality check here. Or maybe it's just "remind me that all women - or most - are like this so I don't feel like such an idiot."

The general question is this: is anyone else out there plagued with occasional bouts of...let's call it "heightened emotional response" that may even at the time seem a bit out of proportion, but it's just how you feel at the moment and you can't really NOT feel that way, but soon after you begin "emoting" you're thinking, "Oh boy - this reaction/conversation was a mistake, and I wish I could go back and erase it, but I'm in it now, and how do I wrap it up and end up in a completely different place from where I am right now?" Only you can't. And then the next day, you wake up, and you think about how the whole thing started, and you think, "Why did that set me off so much?" And then you take a Midol for your cramps...and it hits you.

Shit.

And does anyone else feel stupid and embarrassed when you realize that your overreaction to something that may have normally caused you a legitimate pang, but wouldn't have led to some giant reaction, is *hormonal* - turning you into a stereotype? And for the millionth time, you have to admit to someone (probably the male you live with) that not only are you sheepish about being a drama queen the day before, but now you have to admit that it's that damn thing that all men like to blame all women's complaints on anyway? Aaaaargh!

I'm not alone in this, right?

I hate that I'm always so slow to realize what is wrong with me. And I hate feeling like a stereotype. And I hate that there's usually a grain of legitimacy to what set me off, but it gets blown out of proportion by my hormonalized reaction, so that it's hard to return to the subject "in the light of day" and address with it the true perspective it would've gotten on any other day of the month, especially if it's something important. And that means that either the subject is dismissed completely - like there wasn't anything legitimate in it at all, it was all just hormonal irrationality - or the subject itself now has the cast of my overreaction, so it's a little tainted. Even though J might be willing to listen with understanding, the subject is now touchy and deep down he wonders if I really did mean/feel all the stuff I said, despite what I'm saying later.

Here's a fictional example: J is watching TV and someone eats an olive on-screen and he says in passing, "I love olives. But you hate them, don't you?" There's a slight disappointment that I don't make anything with olives, and instead of saying, "You can keep some in the fridge if you want," I say, "If you wanted me to buy olives last time we were at the store, why didn't you just say so? You don't have to act like I'm keeping you from something you love! You always act like I'm holding you back from what you really want!!" And things go from there, with lots of "always" and "never" being tossed around, and half-way in, I'm realizing, "I really don't feel that way, and no, I'm not making anything with olives, because then I couldn't eat it, but this is SO not the big deal I've just made it into, and how the frig do I get out of this?"

And from then on, he's afraid to mention olives, and I don't know how to reassure that I really don't care about it that much - it was just the hormones making it huge. No, I don't like olives. That's true. And I don't want to have to put them in stuff I'm going to eat, too, because it would ruin the taste for me. But olives are now, suddenly, a sore point, when they so shouldn't be.

Now, that's not exactly a fair representation, because the subject is probably something more legitimate than olives, but the scenario is the same.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Reassure me, ladies, that others of you suffer this same affliction and you know what I'm talking about. It's not that I think there's some solution, but I can feel a little less sheepish if I know I'm part of a community on this!!