Emotional callouses are one way of navigating difficult times.
The problems start after difficult times pass.
Should you rip the callouses off like an old bandaid, or let it ride?
Before you decides, review those hards times so you know the possibility of them returning.
When I was but a small child, maybe third grade, my Mom took me aside to ask who I’d like to live with if she and my Dad got divorced.
I did what anyone would. I cried.
No one left.
She asked me again a few months later. No tears.
Eighteen years later it happened. No tears.
I think I got cried out the first time.
However, I did resolve to never get divorced. My plan? Don’t get married.
But that changed when I got engaged before my Mom’s divorce papers went final.
My marriage date was the same date as her final call.
One thing led to another with my potential wife, like me showing signs of being a poor choice to fit into her family.
It was normal for them to have a special room in their house, a formal room, with everything draped in plastic sheeting.
Me: What’s going on in the room with the plastic, a murder?
Her: We like to keep things nice.
Me: Doesn’t look nice.
Her: It does when we have important guests.
After we broke up, after she decided to go another direction, she wanted me to stick around her town.
I moved to NYC. She visited. For that I got kicked out of the apartment I shared for having women overnight.
That sort of things happens when your roommate is shacked up with a neighbor, pretending to live alone, and their mother is associated with a church.
‘Sinner be gone’ was the message I got.
Leaving was easy back then. No hard feelings.
Not married, not attached, not much of anything, just a guy getting on down the road.
The Biggest Emotional Callouses
When I did get married and have kids, my biggest emotional callouses turned into armor.
I stood up for my wife and kids with a vengeance outsiders had a hard time understanding.
A relative shit talked my wife to the point she decided to wait in the car.
We’d stopped for a visit when his wife wasn’t home and he took the liberty to have his fun.
With the wife in the car I took the liberty to tell him if he decided to go at her again I’d put him on the ground until he ate his share of gravel for lunch, with more for desert.
Oddly enough we weren’t invited back.
My goal with my kids was raising them as a married couple, not as a weekend parent with the question hanging over their head of, ‘What’s wrong with you?’
They grew up with the freedom to shit talk or not to shit talk, but to know the difference.
Now that they’re married with kids, they know the difference first hand.
More important, they grew up knowing they were ‘good enough.’
About Those Callouses
You have things to do that others could do, but you want the experience?
Like what?
Like building a fence.
Like re-builidng a fallen wall.
Physical callouses are different than emotional callouses, but there is a connection.
When you want to get something done, plan to do it, but there’s a time crunch?
What to do?
Dive in, son. Get in there, boy.
About David Gillaspie
