So, anyway then, you are in conversation or otherwise involved with someone and he is being a jerk and you just play nice in order to get through it and then later on you sort of regret being a nice person about the whole thing. You know, like you wish that you had defended yourself better or said something about how you felt and now that it is over you are feeling stupid and defenseless and all that.
It is not as though you can go back in time and get a do over, but how do you handle those feelings of being a loser doormat?
This is the second time in as many weeks as this sort of thing has happened to me and I have to wonder what it is in the way that I am manifesting in the world that invites these experiences into my life. At any rate, I am the common denominator in both of these circumstances and I have to admit to feeling that I am tired of being nice to people who are not nice to me.
I pose this only because the second of those circumstances happened this morning with the train people, who made a mess of my travel plans, waited two weeks to inform me and then wanted me to pay more money for a two-day shorter trip because the fares had increased in price. When I questioned the fairness of that they replied that their mess up really was not their fault, which is insane because it totally is their fault, nor was the price increase. When I said that it really was not my fault either, I suddenly became a difficult customer. And, once again, I have to wonder why the screw-up of someone else is an invitation for me to bend over and just take it.
Frankly, I am weary of always being the person to take the high road and, in this case, offer myself up to highway/rail robbery. I think that I am going to have to begin standing up for myself, and I absolutely know that it is going to make for some difficult situations with people who are accustomed to having me do what they want without comment, much less any protest.
I wonder if this is part of the growth that is supposed to be happening in my life. If that is so, I am not happy about being the boat rocker, nor am I thrilled about fussing with people about things for which I have kept silent and compliant. It is so much easier to simply go along with what someone else wants. I foretell many upset tummies in my future. I just do not want to be the goes with everything girl anymore. Just do not.
And, you know, the worst part of today is that when the conversations with the train people were finished, all I could think about was all of the things, the non-supportive of their feelings things, that I should have said in support of myself. Even though I ended up with a less than complete credit for the shredded and missing parts of the original trip, the whole experience was so distressing and exhausting that I think I am satisfied with what I did manage to get. But, this is the first time that I have felt such regret about being nice, and that upsets me more than any of the other stuff. I mean, how messed up is that, that you have to feel guilty and upset about being nice? No, maybe the worst part is that I seem unable to stop obsessing about it. Where the hell is that coming from? I am always able to acknowledge things, wallow in them a bit and let them go, but not this time.
See? There it is. I cannot stop writing about it. Hopeless, just hopeless. Just because I am a pacifist, well, that does not mean that I have to be a doormat. Someone has to have the answers to this.
Alrighty, just one more thing. This is not about me and is unrelated to today's issue, but it is connected.
A few of my friends and I have a mutual friend. This mutual friend suffers with a mental illness, one along the schizophrenia spectrum, and another person (A) in this group of friends is always supportive of the manic and dissociative states the other friend (B) experiences, often to the detriment of A. B takes up large portions of A's life and A suffers for it. We all suffer along with B, but A takes the brunt and burden of it.
So, anyway, B disappeared for a week, and then another, and then two more. No one could find B, or find anyone who knew where he was.
Then, last week B's sister called A and told him that B has been a patient at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and that he, B, had admitted himself for some undisclosed ailment and that it was determined that A was making B's schizophrenia worse by allowing B to talk about anything he liked. What? Who? How? No answers from anyone. This was followed, this week, by a telephone call from B that his hallucinations have increased, but that his diabetes has been cured. And, seriously, I do not know what any of that means, but is certainly is interesting. Then B showed up at the gallery (that A manages and where I help), with a whole bunch of books and artwork that he needs us to save for him, including a weird piece that combines some of A's poetry from twenty years ago (clipped from those old magazines and pasted in the style of a ransom note) with some disturbing photo-montage images. A further enmeshing of creepiness. Even now, three days later, it still makes me shudder a bit.
Granted, this is a greater and more dramatic and life-concerning situation than a train company that fucks up your vacation plans, and in the whole big picture thing, well, they simply do not compare, but they are connected. If anyone is still with me, the connection is one of allowing the needs of someone else to determine the parameters of your own life. When does genuine helping cross the line into futile rescue. Helping someone is fine, great, even noble and inspiring, but rescuing benefits no one, not the rescued or the rescuer, at least not past those few golden moments following the actual rescue.
When and how do we express that enough is enough? How do we know when to help and when to run from the needs of the people who are important to us? How do we decide when, where and how to be the peacemakers? How do we know when to take current bad (or unfortunate) treatment and defer to the ultimate good for some future and undetermined date or time? When do we permit the best self-interests of someone else to take precedent over our own best self-interest? There is no primer for this, no guidebook, no established protocol for un-enmeshing one's self from unhealthy relationships, un-supportive work environments or anyone else in the world who will mess around with you and not take their own share of the responsibility.
I am tired, hungry, really tired, weary of all of this and my broken bones are aching, but perhaps this sort of pondering is best expressed in these wee hours when the rest of our own world is asleep and quiescent and not up and about bedeviling us. Even so, I still want to know about how to live without these regrets.
And, that whole not taking personal responsibility stuff bugs the heck out of me, but that is separate issue.
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