Synonyms

 

I search for the words.

Crazy.

Stark raving mad.

Totally and unrealistically out of control.

What does one call a person who, when approached in a tactful and kind way, even apologetically approached, to please don't talk with your mouth full, becomes irrationally hysterical?

Screaming vulgar invectives, making wild rambling accusations, bellowing at the top of their lungs in a public park with children around, unwilling to discuss it, or even listen once they got going.

Saying absurd things like, "I got thousands of awards when I worked," or "you are just jealous because I worked and you sponged off your husband," which is not true. I worked from the time my youngest was in kindergarten and I always volunteered at their schools, sometimes three different schools in the same year.

And then it got more personal. "Your children live in different states because they wanted to get away from you!" My children live in different states because they are happy, well-adjusted adults who chose where they wanted to live. They all come home to visit.

And this bellowing went on and on and on for over twenty minutes, interspersed with "F---k you." as I drove us home.

I am numb with shock.

I am also relatively certain I never want to be put in that position again where no matter how calmly I tried to redirect us into having an adult conversation about all this, I was ignored and cursed.

I could not possibly write all the crazy things she screamed at the top of her lungs, but they rattle through my mind as I try to go to sleep. 

Lies

 

Nobody likes being lied to.

It doesn't matter if the lies are outright or by omission.

The result is the same.

It is a feeling of being betrayed.

And the worst part of it for me is that I spot lies so easily. It's hard for me to miss them even if I want to and I don't really want to. Not anymore. After my scammer I have upped my ante on truth seeking and feeling.

So, the question is: how do I deal with people who lie to me?

First of all I don't really respect them any more. 

Secondly I begin to doubt everything they say to me.

If you lie to me you should know I may never say anything to you, because if I did you would just try harder and that never works out. For either of us.

I simply take everything you say with less than a grain of salt until you prove it otherwise.

And unless you are aware I know you are lying why would you try to do that?

Lying is a relationship killer.

The hard stuff

 

I found a picture online where the Dali Lama says, The question is: how can I use this as something positive?

This may be the saving grace that preserves my sanity.

How do I take constant inane complaints and total lack of empathy and turn it into something positive?

That is probably one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to do.

I can shield myself from these things, but actually turning them into something positive? Wow, that is hard!

I am trying to say it will help me build tolerance and patience in a world that requires it on a daily, if not hourly basis, but I'm having trouble with that.

I guess that is the basis for most of the good stuff in religions. Learning to deal with the fools, the bullies and the frustrating people with love, tolerance and patience.

It is hard!

Her real job

Someone took all my frozen pretzels out of the box so I don't have the instructions on how to cook them.

I can give you a copy of mine.

I don't like them anyway, they don't taste like the real ones at the mall.

I love them, I think they taste just as good or better.

They aren't like the mall and  besides the mall is almost empty now. There's nothing there.

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After I ordered our ice cream I had to pee, so bad, but when the lady unlocked the door the bathroom was like a closet it was so small. 

I couldn't find the light switch so I just closed the door, then I couldn't find my way out. I pounded on the wall but it took her forever to let me out.

My ice cream was half melted by the time she got out. She got a new cone. I ate my melted sundae.

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I didn't know I couldn't take a bath in my bathroom. There is only a shower.

Didn't you look when you visited the apartment before signing the lease?

I thought it would be like yours, so no.

You could switch to another apartment.

No, I'm not moving again.  (and so she does not shower for the first week and then . . .) There was water all over my bathroom. I have never showered. It's not my fault I don't know how.

Did you close the curtain on both ends? 

I closed it but what am I supposed to do when I am using the soap?

Did you turn the hand held shower water off while soaping up?

No! I don't want to freeze to death!

If the bathroom door is closed you won't freeze. Did you just let the water spray all over while you soaped up? You won't freeze. Part of you is out of the water when you take a bath too.

Well excuse me for not being perfect. I've never had to shower before.

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My son wants everything out of my old house by Friday.

He has been at your old house nearly every weekend since June packing up and running your garage sale. He's even made a gazillion trips back there to get other stuff.

Everyone else packed 3-4 boxes of my stuff to me packing one. I have to sort through everything and decide what to take. And Rose doesn't want me to get rid of the stuff leftover. She wants me to donate it.

But you moved August 1st. Tell Rose she has till Wednesday to get what she wants.

I can't do that!

You could do that if you stopped shopping every day and unpacked or finished moving.

I don't shop every day. I haven't bought hardly anything new.

Just because you walk through the stores and don't buy anything doesn't mean you aren't out shopping.

You think you're so perfect. You're friends don't think so.

You don't know my friends.

I've met them once. Those teacher friends of yours. 

Which of course is not true and even if it were true they would not have said I thought I was perfect. But given all that it would have been twenty years ago if she met them.

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The complaints are nonstop and the excuses change with the hour.  She has excuses for not getting her laundry done, unpacking the rest of her boxes, getting the stuff out of her old house and it's always someone else's fault. And she's tired. (but not too tired to shop or run around with her friend.)

Sometimes when she leaves my apartment my heart is beating a hundred miles an hour and I can barely breathe I am so frustrated. It's like talking to a slow three year old who is proud of not being able to do anything she doesn't want to do in the moment. She has given up problem solving altogether. She replies on other people to figure everything out for her. Her only real job is to find excuses for not doing things.

Choices

 

Our problems really are unique to us. They may be similar to other people, but that does not relieve us of the responsibility for our own difficulties.

There are a few genetic things that we are born with, but most of our problems stem from what we do with those things and the rest of the things in our life.

What we eat; how we sleep or rest; how we move; how much we move; how we use our brain and even how much we use our brain; all of these things affect the quality of our lives.

The way we deal with stress has a huge effect on our lives.

Our ability to take control of our own lives depends on our desire to organize, maintain and follow the details that can make our life chaotic or calm.

If our first response is to panic, or run to someone else, we are losing more things than you might imagine.

Problems allow our brains to grow. Learning how to manage our own finances, taking a class, reading instructions, even experimenting on our own all help our brains grow.

Avoiding these things causes all sorts of problems and those problems will only grow if we don't make some changes. People are designed to evolve and grow. Denying themselves the right to do this may be a precursor to a miserable old age.

In fact, they can make life right now pretty inconvenient.

The end

 

The end does not have to be the Big THE End.

Things end all the time.

The last word. The last day at work. The final good-bye. A project finished and submitted. 

Every act looks different once it becomes the final one, so it's worth always trying to put your best foot forward. 

Just in case it becomes immortalized in some way.

For example I know a young man who hasn't seen his family members in years. They were brought together by a wedding and the day after the wedding he went to breakfast with his closest cousins.

Throwing on his kookiest shirt he joined them all for coffee, eggs, and banal conversations. A morning of no great importance or so he thought.

Until last night when he visited his aunt and there on the wall on a large canvas, backed in black was the photo of him and all his family. Everyone wearing something relatively plain and not worth commenting on. And there he was in that kooky shirt, sticking out like a sore thumb for all eternity.

Not the end of the world, but a way he will be remembered for long after he ceases to live on this earth.

Not a problem. Just not what he would have chosen had he given it any thought.

Change

 

I can only imagine the first human being who discovered fire trying to take it home and use it.

"You're not bringing that into my cave!"

"But it will keep us warm."

"My family has been warm enough wearing bear skins for generations. If it was good enough for mama, it's good enough for me."

"You can put meat on it and make it easier to chew."

"Meat from the fire just doesn't taste right."

Or when people started having toilets inside.

"You want to put an outhouse in my bedroom?"

"Well bred people have servants to carry out their chamber pots. We don't need that smelly contraption in our house." 

"And don't get me started on bath tubs. Why would anyone want to take a bath more than once a week."

Or the first horseless carriages.

"A horse is dependable. Feed him a little hay and he always works."

" The dust!  Little Herman won't be able to breath."

Then telephones.

"What an invasion of privacy. I won't have that evil thing in my home."

"Pretty soon people won't even get together and socialize.  They'll just sit in their homes and talk on a telephone. Women won't get their housework done. Children will stop studying. The world will go to . . ."

Change is probably the father of creative complaining.