Okay, That’s Enough Feelings For Now, Thank You

I just wanted to start out by saying that it’s really great that you have so many feelings. Feelings are really important. And you, Brian, have a lot of them. Like, a lot.

I’m really glad that I seem trustworthy enough to help you work through a lot of stuff. I genuinely have no idea what it is. Is it something about my face? Did I once accidentally tell you that I could handle this? I know you thought it was cool that I went to therapy, but you understood that I’m not the therapist in that situation, right?

Whatever! It’s great that you consider me a safe outlet for you to now get 23 years of pent-up emotions out of your system.

Oh, you have more? Have I just opened the floodgates? Is there a way to limit how many feelings you share with me in one sitting? It’s not that I don’t care! It’s just, like, holy shit. You have a lot of feelings.

It’s great that you find me to be an ideal human being to help you carry all of your emotional baggage. But, damn, Brian—you feel a lot of things. And now that we’ve started combing through everything you’ve ever felt since 1994 and processing it, it’s like you’ve just started to experience feeling things for the first time in your life and you don’t know where to put them all.

So, you’re giving them all to me. Now I have all your feelings and am feeling all your feelings with you. I, an average human being, am definitely comfortable handling all of this without having regular meltdowns.

Everything is fine!

Do you not tell your friends about your feelings? I am physically recoiling at the prospect of not sharing my inner most fears and thoughts and emotions with every woman in my life. But I spread them out—Jessica gets all my work stress, Karen gets all my social life fiascos. Am I both Jessica and Karen to you?

Do you not call your Mom on days where you feel like crying in the middle of the subway platform? Am I your Mom replacement? Because you called me when you felt like crying in the middle of the subway platform and then texted me an hour later about the hot water getting shut off in your building and how that made you feel even sadder than before, so I just need to know if I’m covering those emotional responsibilities as well.

Can we start making a list? Maybe just all the categories of emotions that you want me to support. I’m not equipped to handle any of it, but I can try if you give me a concise ranking of things you need help processing.

And I’m just going to put it out there right now—I can’t keep calming you down when you hear ‘Cats in the Cradle.’ Just stop listening to the song.

The rest you can hand out to your close friends who are probably suppressing the exact same feelings I accidentally unleashed within you when I asked you to tell me how you were really feeling that one day.

But for now, Brian, that’s enough.