Wednesdays at Forty-Something: I Struggle

I think people outside my life might see a life of little complication.  And, to some extent, they'd be correct.  I don't have to worry about a spouse pissing me off for doing or thinking differently than me.  I don't have children that drive me up the wall with their crazy antics.  My cats are pretty easy going and are happy so long as they're fed and can lay next to me any time that I sit down.

But I struggle.  I struggle to balance the priorities in my life with maintaining the relationships that I do have.  I struggle to find friends who can deal with me in the ways that I've come to be.  Because of the things mentioned above, compromising is not something that I've had to do, really, ever in my adult life.  Everything has been done my way and, if not, well, I finagle it so that it will be done my way.  Or I don't do it.  Because, really, I am the center of my universe.  Why do anything that won't benefit me or that I don't want to do.

I'm not infallible though.  I do shit wrong all the time.  Especially communication.  With many, many years experience, I've learned how to phrase a question so that there is only one answer.  Honestly, this stems from the the annoyance that comes from asking someone a yes/no question and getting a freaking dissertation.  I don't need an explanation.  I just want the yes or no.  Unfortunately, I now use this technique often when I ask a question.

And, because I employed this technique numerous times, in order to get the answers that I wanted to hear, rather than what they were actually saying, I was called "a spoiled brat" and "petulant".  Unfortunately, not totally incorrect.  I've already said that things have to go my way and that I get pissy when they don't.  You know what, though, that's not all I am.  That's one part of me.  It's one part of me that tends to rear its head in the wee hours when I'm feeling like shit and missing people whom I love and wishing I was with them.

You can't control whom you love but you can control whom you allow to make you feel like shit when they get pissed off about something you said or did.  You teach people how to treat you and I've allowed this person to let me feel like shit because they get wounded with how we communicate when we're each feeling low.  I'm not dismissing the idea that I need to work on how I say things.  However, I won't be made to feel like shit by anyone, even someone whom I love.