Sorry to hear you're feelin' blue. Thing is, while we're busy (or not so much) spinning out the narratives of everyday life in our heads, we all seem to be compelled (guided is too gentle a word) by expectations formed many years ago, and then, points on the calendar then come around in turn - each associated with various memories and resulting expectations - and we're triggered just like the 24-hour electo-mechanical timers that may control outdoor lighting and the like. Christmas is often a killer, ditto the B-day of a dearly departed. The idea [easier said than done] is to recognize those expectations for what they are, the desire that things be other than they are. And the more we struggle with this, the worse it gets. That's emotional pain: as simply as I can make it.

And for what it's worth, physical pain is just the same, if not easier on the whole to adapt to. Really??? Case in point: the classic image of the kid, wincing and contorting his body at the prospect of getting a vaccine. And what he doesn't realize is that it would be so much easier if he just yielded to the needle! And even the most intense flair in my personal experience - "CAN" be handled the same way, be aware of it, sure, but let it just pass through without resistance, and it will do you no harm. And surprisingly easy to pick up too, the hard part is remembering in the moment to keep that frame of reference!

So, to finish off on a quirky note, but directly in response to your post, my name really "is" Mike, which I've been called since birth. It was emblazoned on everything from my knitted Christmas stocking to the top of my hand-written elementary school report cards. My mom wanted me to be named a “Jr.,” I suspect as a statement to her father’s mentally ill younger brother, who, following what I understand were many years of travail, became outraged by my parents’ marriage and demanded of his brother (my grandfather) “How dare you pollute the [family] line with Jewish blood!” whereupon all ties were forever broken. ;.. ( And to distinguish me from my dad, I was called Mike, as an homage to my paternal grandfather, who had been born Mikhail Mikhailovich - under which he landed at Ellis Island as a babe-in-arms and later joined the Army in WW-I, spending almost all of his life simply called Mike.

Mike