misery has a time limit and mine is 30 minutes

a confession about control, emotion, and the fine art of moving on

I don’t let myself suffer for free. I’ve got a rule: 30 minutes max. That’s all the airtime I give to heartbreak, shame, or whatever petty tragedy my brain is dressed in that day. After that, I clean up the evidence, plaster on a smile, and pretend that counts as closure.

On bad days, I grant myself an extra thirty. A full hour to fall apart. Not because I’m busy. Not because I’m healed. But because I know myself, and I know what happens if I don’t. Misery, if left unchecked, starts redecorating. It moves in, makes a home out of your brain, and suddenly your whole day revolves around something you can’t change.

I’m not having that. So I sulk with intention. Cry with purpose. Stare at the wall like it personally insulted me. Then I wipe my face, doomscroll on my phone, and move on.

And this isn’t about pretending to be okay, or putting on a mask to hide some deep, unresolved pain. It’s not performative. It’s not avoidance. It’s just… done. I know it sounds weird, but I’m genuinely over whatever was upsetting me once the time strikes. The grief clock runs out, and I’m free to go.

I can’t pinpoint when this started. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism that calcified into personality. Maybe it’s from watching 50% of the people in my life let sadness swallow entire years, entire versions of themselves, and deciding I didn’t want that.

Or maybe it’s because the other 50% never gave into it. Never shed a tear. Never deviated from a plan. Never let anything linger, much less feel. Maybe that’s why I survive the way I do. Not by avoiding emotion, but by containing it. By being a perfect storm of the people who raised me. A balance between control and chaos. A tightrope walk between the part of me that needs to micromanage and the part that needs to sob dramatically in a parking lot.

I’ve always been a control freak. I know, it’s contradictory as hell. How can someone who craves control let themselves feel something so wildly uncontrollable? But maybe that’s the thing, feeling everything all at once is giving up control. It’s like standing in front of a cliff, waiting for the universe to push you off, and being told to enjoy the free fall.

Nope. I like to make the decisions. I want the rules in my hands, even if they’re about something as unpredictable as heartbreak.

So when I decided I’d give myself thirty minutes to suffer, I was doing what I do best: controlling the chaos. Because I can’t stop the sadness from coming, but I can control how long it stays.

Now, this probably makes me sound like a Type A person, and it would definitely confuse anyone who actually knows me, because I’m far from that. I think I’m even too relaxed to be Type B. I’m not a schedule-and-spreadsheet kind of control freak. I have no sense of urgency. And maybe my emotional timer is why.

My version of control isn’t about structure. It’s about people. I study everyone I surround myself with. I master them. I learn their needs, their patterns, and their reactions until I can predict them. Manage them. Somewhat control them.

The kind of control I crave is far more deranged. (But let’s dive into that some other time.)

Sometimes — rarely — the thirty minutes don’t cut it. Sometimes the sadness lingers like expensive perfume, clinging to my clothes, my voice, and the inside of my elbows. I try to close the door like usual, but it wedges its foot in and makes itself comfortable. And I hate it. I hate when feelings overstay their welcome. When they refuse to obey the rules I created to protect myself. It’s embarrassing, honestly. Like my own brain is ignoring the boundaries I clearly set.

People don’t always get it. Friends call it robotic. Family thinks I “move on too fast.” And sometimes I even wonder if I’m missing out on some collective grief ritual I wasn’t invited to. But the truth is, I’m not cold. I’m not robotic. I just don’t let sadness live rent-free in my head.

I’ve seen too many people wear their pain like a badge, dragging it behind them like an anchor. They think it makes them deep, but it just makes them tired. So when I cut myself off at the thirty-minute mark, it’s not a denial of feeling. It’s a refusal to let emotions run my life. But people don’t get that. They want you to stay in the mess with them, like it’s some sacred, shared experience.

It’s not. It’s just messy. And that, frankly, doesn’t match my aesthetic.

There have been moments where I gave in. When I didn’t have a time limit. When I let sadness spread out and take its shoes off. I let it ruin my appetite, my sleep, my weekends. I thought feeling everything all the way through was some kind of emotional honesty. Like, if it didn’t wreck me, did it even count?

But over time, through enough disappointments, unanswered texts, and hot girl crying over things that were never coming back (no, I don’t ugly cry) - I realized something: suffering isn’t proof of love or growth. Sometimes, it’s just… suffering. And I didn’t want to be good at it.

And now, I’m free. Free from the guilt of not wallowing. Free from the expectation that grief should ruin you. There’s no prize for how long you can suffer, and honestly, I’ve got better things to do.

So I give myself thirty minutes, and then I’m on to the next thing. Because misery isn’t a lifestyle. It’s just a guest.

And guests? They’ve got to leave.

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Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this and want to fuel more overthinking, storytelling, and occasional strokes of (accidental) genius, you can leave a tip — or buy me a matcha at the overpriced café where I pretend to be extremely mysterious while staring at my screen. No pressure. Just eternal gratitude… and maybe a questionable plot twist or two :)