Why did the door slam?

I had lunch with a coworker today. She's the one you go to when you know you need the truth. You know the friend. Sometimes you need to go to the friend who will tell you "f them all, you're SO much better than that." Other times you need to hear the "are you for real? Don't be ridiculous." This coworker is the friend who says, "Oh, I see. But did you think of this?" One of her personal goals in almost every conversation I've ever heard her participate in is to be as neutral as humanly possible. And dammit, that woman is neutral. So on occasion when I'm somewhere in the middle of "Could I BE any more right?" and "I think I've gone batshit crazy again" she's a good person to talk to.

She introduced me to my new motto. Or at least the motto I will try my hardest to remember when I'm all, "oh NO s/he did NOT." And that motto my friends, is "why did the door slam?"

Picture this. You're in a room. With me. We're having a conversation about nothing in particular. I get up to leave the room and the door slams behind me. Did I slam the door because I'm so angry at the non-particular conversation you thought we were having? Is there a breeze that grabbed the door and caused it to slam behind me? Is the door a habitual slammer due to poor craftsmanship? Am I not aware of my own brawny biceps? Why exactly did the door slam.

More often that not, we assume (because it's probably happened a time or two) that the "leaver" in this situation is PAF (pissed as fuck, for those of you not related to my brother and therefore, not fluent in his text abbreviations). So you go ahead and assume I'm mad at you. I come back in the room, let's say in this situation I left because I had to use the facilities. I'm back now and you're on the defense with me because I am PAF at you (obviously...in your mind). I totally pick up on your salty ass behavior and assume you're PAF at me because of something I did? (And I'm probably all, how did I do something? I was in the bathroom?!) And then we continue on this vicious cycle until we're both PAF and have no idea why. And the start of it all is that I'm so damn strong I can't possibly shut a door without authority, it's just how I'm built people. Not the first time these biceps got me in trouble.

Okay so obviously that was a mildly exaggerated hypothetical situation, but you've probably been in something relatively similar. And for what? Because you didn't stop that little portion of your brain (you know, the portion that has batshit crazy tendencies...don't act like we don't all have a little bit of that) and ask yourself, "Why did the door slam?"

Seriously, it was like a light bulb went off. And I happen to be in a handful of situations lately where I probably could have had a little less depth to dig myself out of if I had simply just asked myself this simple question. And stopped being insanely illogical. And so, I'm sharing it with you.

You can thank Jean too.