Ugly Chewing
I am in a war with someone over control. I am losing. She will not give an inch.
This is not the problem. The problem is I can not put it down. My resistance to her resistance eats away at my time.
Months and months ago the house across the street had a fire. Two type A rats from the burned house took refuse in my home. My daughter's old boy friend who lived with me for four years after she moved out, ( it was a very big house), killed one of the rats by quietly dropping a recliner on it at three in the morning. The widowed remaining rat moved into my bathroom and lived under my sink, inside of a cabinet that had some excellent acoustic qualities. The sink was possibly made of the same wood that cellos are made of. The rat would start to chew on the wood every night starting at exactly 3:17 AM until 5:30ish AM, safe from falling recliners.
My thoughts remind me of this rat chewing.
There was another woman. She was eating a cucumber and she said to me, "I just love cucumbers. They have so much vitamin E." She said a lot of things like that. Her inner Google had a virus. She was often wrong and also time warped. She talked about Nixon as if he lived nest door to her just yesterday.
One time she said she did not understand why people liked to celebrate Easter. "Why would everyone celebrate the day Christ died?"
"Could it be that Easter is the day he rose from the dead?" I asked her. "No" she said. "I think it is the day he died." "OK" I said.
But for days I wondered how it is we learn things. A quick lesson from a Hallmark Store might have informed her. Rabbits and eggs and hats or knowing a church person or seeing a movie. We live in a Christian culture. How did she not absorb the myth? How is that possible? It was beyond me. Absolutely beyond me. Rat chewingly beyond me.
When she said cucumbers have vitamin E I did not say anything. I did not say, "There is NO vitamin E in a cucumber."
I carried that none statement around in my head like a letter you need to mail for three weeks. It just stayed in my active statement file. It festered
like a burp that won't burp or worse. It created an air pocket and a prayer. "Oh my God, there is no E in a cucumber."
Little things like that. A different person recently told me that duct tape only lasts six months. I am trying to stay conscious and so I had time to ask myself, "Self, do you wish to get in an argument over the life expectancy of duct tape?"
And besides, I was not sure. It was not my experience that duct tape rots and falls off of things twice a year but that does not mean it does not happen, so God help me, I looked it up.....
I am in a war with someone over control. I am losing. The only real power is power over self. I will not put it down. I want to do X. She says Y. Y is what is happening and except for it is not the way I would do it, it will work. Within her Y world, I do not praise her. Y is more work for the same results that X would be. Y actually takes more skill. She has that skill. I withhold the praise.
I chew.
This is not the problem. The problem is I can not put it down. My resistance to her resistance eats away at my time.
Months and months ago the house across the street had a fire. Two type A rats from the burned house took refuse in my home. My daughter's old boy friend who lived with me for four years after she moved out, ( it was a very big house), killed one of the rats by quietly dropping a recliner on it at three in the morning. The widowed remaining rat moved into my bathroom and lived under my sink, inside of a cabinet that had some excellent acoustic qualities. The sink was possibly made of the same wood that cellos are made of. The rat would start to chew on the wood every night starting at exactly 3:17 AM until 5:30ish AM, safe from falling recliners.
My thoughts remind me of this rat chewing.
There was another woman. She was eating a cucumber and she said to me, "I just love cucumbers. They have so much vitamin E." She said a lot of things like that. Her inner Google had a virus. She was often wrong and also time warped. She talked about Nixon as if he lived nest door to her just yesterday.
One time she said she did not understand why people liked to celebrate Easter. "Why would everyone celebrate the day Christ died?"
"Could it be that Easter is the day he rose from the dead?" I asked her. "No" she said. "I think it is the day he died." "OK" I said.
But for days I wondered how it is we learn things. A quick lesson from a Hallmark Store might have informed her. Rabbits and eggs and hats or knowing a church person or seeing a movie. We live in a Christian culture. How did she not absorb the myth? How is that possible? It was beyond me. Absolutely beyond me. Rat chewingly beyond me.
When she said cucumbers have vitamin E I did not say anything. I did not say, "There is NO vitamin E in a cucumber."
I carried that none statement around in my head like a letter you need to mail for three weeks. It just stayed in my active statement file. It festered
like a burp that won't burp or worse. It created an air pocket and a prayer. "Oh my God, there is no E in a cucumber."
Little things like that. A different person recently told me that duct tape only lasts six months. I am trying to stay conscious and so I had time to ask myself, "Self, do you wish to get in an argument over the life expectancy of duct tape?"
And besides, I was not sure. It was not my experience that duct tape rots and falls off of things twice a year but that does not mean it does not happen, so God help me, I looked it up.....
I am in a war with someone over control. I am losing. The only real power is power over self. I will not put it down. I want to do X. She says Y. Y is what is happening and except for it is not the way I would do it, it will work. Within her Y world, I do not praise her. Y is more work for the same results that X would be. Y actually takes more skill. She has that skill. I withhold the praise.
I chew.
posted by Wrren at 5:11 AM
6 Comments:
woof, girl. that is some serious energy diversion. What would you do with that energy? maybe something you're avoiding...
I have a semi-favorite epithet that might work for you. When sufficiently pissed off, a nice, clenched teeth snarl of "gobble, nibble, CHEW" does wonders for frustration. Feel free to follow with a from-the-belly ARRRRRRRGH!!
Why thank you. I made it serious myself.
I will give ARRRRR-ing a try.
This reminds me of a question I used to ask couples when I was still working as a therapist.
"Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?" A person can learn a bit from the answer. Few people ever admit they would rather be right. Instead, they'd say that being right made them happy.
All in all, this question has been invaluable to me. I must have asked it of myself at least a thousand times.
When I first read this, I thought you were mad at me for bullying you into starting a blog. That I wanted you to do Y . . . but then I realized how self-absorbed that was. Narcissus, indeed.
(So you're not mad, right? You can win, effortlessly.)
Other than that, this post reminded me of my grandmother and her impossible assertions. The way she tries to hook everyone's attention with an outrageous claim. She somehow has learned how to get negative attention and figures that's better than none at all. Like you, I do not engage.
Theresa's "right/happy" choice is something I think about a lot.
But I'm with you on the impulse to simply correct a physical fact, or to maddening impulse to spell out an easier course. My father's world was made of up cucumbers with vitamin E, etc. And I'm a fact-checker. Not a good match.
I have however, been enjoying practicing restraint for quite a while, and allowing people to live in whatever Universe they have a right to create, as long as "Y" doesn't make my life and the big picture less peaceful.
~S :)
how do you keep duct tape from falling apart twice a year? keep taping the torn parts up. eventually you'll have an empty roll of tape in your hands, the thing will fall apart and you won't feel bad for not buying more tape. you'll just chuck the empty roll in the trash and get back to the moving you were doing before you ever got stuck taping up broken things that weren't yours to fix. and it will feel good. letting the broken thing flop around, like a fish out of water. until it learns for itself where the pond is. it will feel good being unattached to the fishes outcome. shit, you didn't yank the thing out of the pond. you just came along and starting spitting on it. because a wet fish is a lot more fun. my advice (not asked for) stop spitting, save your fluids, discard the tape (now i'm REALLY mixing metaphors)and get back to swimming with your own fins. the bitch can buy quality "floatees" at any wallmart. not to mention her own tape.
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