No stoop for you
My threshold for settling or pivoting or accommodating is rapidly diminishing.
A couple of weeks ago, I reached out to some painters and only one guy got back to me. And then he proceeded to be out of contact for a week. By the time he got back to me, I still didn’t have a painter. But I knew my painter wasn’t him. (I have since gotten my apartment painted by someone else and I love it!)
Then I needed someone to do a repair on the house we are selling. Since my husband and I live on the road in a different town, I had my sister-in-law let a handyman from a service in and ask him to call me so I could get explain exactly what the job entailed. He never called. He wrote up an estimate of “what he would do if it were his house.”
At first I blamed myself for not traveling all the way there to talk to him in person. My sister-in-law then called me apologizing telling me she tried to get him to call me. That she wrote my number down and handed it to him.
That was when it occurred to me that there were two 40 something women apologizing for not making it possible for this man to do his job. A job he easily could have done if he had just followed directions. The first step was just to call me.
Needless to say, I didn’t even look at the estimate. If I can’t trust someone to listen I should not give them the job. I texted them that I would not be using them.
But this was scary! Because this company is so well respected in our suburb. These are the 5 star people. So who am I to say they are not for me?
Anyway I have a different guy coming tomorrow to start taking out my bathroom sink and wall.
Even my husband has felt this change. We were looking at air fresheners the other day, and he picked one and said, if we don’t like it we can change it. So I said ok. But then we got like 5 steps and I said to myself, Kate, you hate that brand and you most definitely don’t like “Ocean” scented stuff. So I said sorry. Nope. Can’t do it.
I want to be clear that I am very good at going with the flow. And marriage has taught me that I only need to have an opinion when I really have an opinion. If my husband had picked something tropical, which is not my favorite, but is lovely and is one we can both agree on, I could have not had an opinion. I wouldn’t need to say that I would prefer something more floral. It would have been fine and I would been content.
But I hate ocean. Why does it smell like the worst of the 90s???
I don’t need to settle for something that is just going to make me unhappy. I don’t need to be annoyed when I can just opt out.
Resentment is poison for me. And it almost always happens because I knew better and I didn’t listen to myself.
20 years of weighing my food and abstaining from my drug foods, like processed sugar and carbohydrates, has taught me to be my most authentic self. Every day I don’t eat compulsively, or eat to get high, is a day I have a clearer path to my truest heart.
So every time I see that clear path and choose something else to please someone else, I get resentful.
The truth is I have always been resentful. It’s just that having my eating under control lets me see that it’s not actually anyone else’s fault. That my resentment is a lack of responsibility.
I take responsibility every time I say “no, that’s not for me.” And I end up getting what I want with out a bunch of extra steps.
onceafatgirl 