There’s a story I see come up on Reddit every so often.
A man writes about his divorce.
The title is some version of: She divorced me because I left dishes by the sink.
And at first glance, it sounds ridiculous.
A marriage ended over a glass beside the dishwasher?
Really?
But that’s not actually the story.
The story is about a pattern.
The glass wasn’t the whole problem. It was one small, repeated thing in a much larger collection of things that had apparently been wearing away at the relationship.
And I think about that story sometimes when I think about feelings.
Because I wonder how often we do something similar to ourselves.
Not with dishes.
With “it’s fine.”
It’s just one thing
It’s just one unanswered message.
One interruption.
One time someone asked you to do something when you were already exhausted.
One more evening when you made the plans because it was easier than waiting for someone else to decide.
One comment that bothered you, but probably wasn’t worth bringing up.
One disappointment that wasn’t quite big enough to justify being disappointed about.
One time you wanted something different but thought, I don’t really care.
And maybe you don’t.
Maybe every individual thing really is small.
So you let it go.
Then another thing happens.
And another.
And another.
None of them seems important enough to stop everything and say:
Actually, this bothered me.
So you keep going.
You accommodate.
You understand.
You give someone the benefit of the doubt.
You tell yourself it isn’t worth making a fuss over.
And sometimes that’s exactly right.
Sometimes letting something go is a perfectly good choice.
But there is a difference between choosing not to make something important and never giving yourself enough space to find out whether it mattered to you.
Small doesn’t mean meaningless
I think we’re sometimes very good at arguing ourselves out of our own feelings.
It’s not that serious.
Other people have bigger problems.
I don’t want to be difficult.
It’s only a little thing.
I can deal with it.
And maybe you can.
You probably can.
You’re capable. You’ve dealt with plenty before.
But capability has a strange way of making things disappear.
If you can tolerate something, you can start believing that means you should.
If you can accommodate something, you can start believing that means you don’t mind.
If you can carry something, you can start believing it isn’t heavy.
And then one day something tiny happens and you are suddenly furious.
Or crying.
Or sitting in the car longer than necessary because you don’t want to go inside yet.
And the obvious thing to say is:
Why am I so upset about this?
Maybe the better question is:
How long have I been telling myself it wasn’t worth being upset about?
Sometimes resentment is a collection
I don’t think resentment always arrives as one enormous feeling.
Sometimes it seems to accumulate almost invisibly.
A little disappointment here.
A little frustration there.
A need you didn’t mention.
A preference you handed over.
A hurt you decided was too small to bother with.
A boundary you didn’t realize you’d crossed because you were busy making sure everyone else was comfortable.
None of these moments necessarily feels like the thing.
But they don’t necessarily disappear just because you didn’t make a fuss about them.
They can sit quietly.
And then something happens.
The dishes are left by the sink.
Again.
And suddenly the reaction seems much bigger than the dish.
But perhaps the dish isn’t carrying only itself.
Perhaps it has arrived carrying every previous dish.
Every previous “It’s fine.”
Every previous moment of “I’ll just do it myself.”
Every time you noticed something and decided your noticing wasn’t important enough to mention.
This is one of the reasons I think feelings deserve some attention even when they seem small.
Not because every irritation is secretly profound.
Not because every annoyance needs to become a conversation.
And certainly not because we should walk around cataloguing every minor inconvenience until we can produce an itemized list of grievances.
Quite the opposite.
Sometimes noticing something while it is still small means it gets to remain small.
You don’t have to make it a big deal
I think this is where self-trust gets interesting.
Self-trust isn’t necessarily saying:
This bothered me, therefore everyone needs to change.
It’s not making every preference a demand.
It’s not insisting that every feeling is evidence that someone else has done something wrong.
Sometimes self-trust is much quieter.
It’s noticing:
I actually do mind that.
Or:
I thought I didn’t care, but I think I do.
Or even:
I’m more upset about this than I expected.
And then you have information.
You can decide what to do with it.
Maybe you say something.
Maybe you don’t.
Maybe you ask for something different next time.
Maybe you realize the thing wasn’t actually important once you had a little space to think about it.
Maybe you discover that it wasn’t this particular incident that bothered you. It was the pattern.
Maybe you discover that the pattern is yours.
Maybe it belongs to someone else.
Maybe there isn’t anyone to blame at all.
You don’t have to know immediately.
I think we underestimate the cost of “fine”
“Fine” is useful.
Sometimes it’s exactly what we mean.
Sometimes dinner really is fine.
Sometimes the change of plans really doesn’t matter.
Sometimes you genuinely don’t care which restaurant you go to.
Sometimes you really would rather let something go.
But fine can also become a place we put things when we don’t have the energy to figure out what we actually feel.
And if we keep putting things there, eventually the cupboard gets full.
Not every item needs to be taken back out.
But perhaps it is worth opening the door occasionally.
Just to see what’s there.
There may be nothing wrong
This is the part I don’t want to lose.
Because I don’t think the answer is to become hypervigilant about our own emotions.
I don’t want to turn every bad mood into a message from our deepest selves.
Sometimes you’re tired.
Sometimes you’re hungry.
Sometimes the day has simply been annoying.
Sometimes someone left a glass beside the sink and that’s all it was.
A glass.
A glass is allowed to be a glass.
But sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes the thing that finally gets you is carrying the weight of everything that came before it.
And if you never give yourself permission to notice the smaller things, you may not realize how much you’ve been carrying until something tiny breaks the surface.
Maybe that’s part of what healthy wallowing can be.
Not sitting around marinating in every grievance.
Not making pain your personality.
Not refusing to move forward.
Just being willing to stop for a moment and admit:
That bothered me.
I wanted something different.
That hurt.
I am more tired than I realized.
I thought I was fine, but I don’t think I am.
There doesn’t have to be a dramatic conclusion.
You don’t have to turn it into a lesson.
You don’t have to make anyone else responsible for making the feeling disappear.
You can simply let yourself know the truth of it.
And then decide what comes next.
Because maybe the point isn’t to prevent every difficult feeling.
Maybe it’s to notice them while they’re still small enough to hear.
Before they have to become the dishes.
Again.
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