This week I had two separate opportunities to assert myself and.....I didn't. Was my conscience clear in both instances? I imagine the little Brenda's who occupy my brain who make these split decisions were quickly weighing all the evidence and shrugged their shoulders in the end saying "We could go either way". I could feel my heart beat faster. Alarms were going off. ABORT! ABORT! Mr. Sulu, prepared to engage thrusters, warp factor 2.
Was I being attacked by a vigilante neighborhood watch block captain you ask? The first incident happened at my gym's pool. If you have listened to my podcasts, you would have been subjected to my many thoughts regarding swimming pool etiquette. For example, please don't occupy a lane when people are waiting and just talk and not swim. Only so many people can fit in a lane, don't push your way in and work around the people already there. But my biggest pet peeve is when people just show up in your lane. I am not so selfish as to believe that I don't have to follow the gym's rules that state members will be expected to share their lane in the event of a high volume of use. I can't say that I like it but I will do it. 99% of the time if I am the one joining the lane, I will make a point of asking the person's permission as a courtesy or at least make eye contact so they know I am there. But this time I threw caution to the wind and treated the lady that occupied the lane the way I had been treated and just showed up.
There are many kinds of swimmers. The older lady aquasizers who can "work out" but still maintain a conversation the whole time. There are swimmers who are just go there everyday. It has become part of their routine like drinking coffee and the act of being there is enough. The next group at the ex-swim team members. These people do the cool flip at the end of each lap, their strokes are flawless, and they are fast, faster than me. And then there are the therapy swimmers. Technically they ARE swimming. They are in the pool, their limbs are moving and they are floating but it's little more than bath time in a giant tub. So the lady I was joining on the particular day in this particular lane was doing some therapy swimming. Right down the middle of the lane. On her back, barely kicking her legs, and the slap, slap, slap of her arms as they make contact with the water and then there was me. Squeezing my as close to the wall as possible, doing the crawl. As I approached the same portion of the lane that she occupied her arm grazed my leg and that is when the shit hit the fan. Before I could even say "Sorry" which I had intended to do, she flew into a rage. "You could have told me you were getting in the lane! Tap me on the shoulder! You didn't have to just get in without letting me know!" She was so instantly pissed off and loud I might add. My brain went into double speed trying to decide what to do. If my edit button wasn't as strong I would have said what I was thinking, "Nobody tells me lady. Get the fuck over it." But I didn't. I finished my lap. I could see her just staring at me the whole time. I got my things and got out of the pool and sat dripping waiting for the aquasize class to get over. Then, just like an after school special, a guy walks in and hollers down to the same woman and says, "Hey do you mind if I share your lane?"
In the past, I would have just gotten up and left the pool entirely thinking to myself "Well, I guess I won't be swimming today." but I really needed that swim. If I didn't do it now, it would not get done today. And part of me felt like I asked for her yelling at me because I really hate it when people do that to me. I didn't feel like I had a guilt free conscience in these circumstances but what followed is what confounds me. Instead of just counting it as one of these creepy, bitchy moments you sometimes experience with strangers, I was so embarrassed and felt beat down. These are the times in life when I feel like I have a bull's eye on my back. "Hey everybody, this chick is weak! Feel liking dumping your bad day off Brenda, well, shit away!" And this makes me so frustrated and when I am frustrated, I cry. When I got back into the water in a sanctioned lane, I was swimming and crying. Quite an accomplishment I think. My thoughts go to "How can I make this not happen again?". I cannot stand be chastised by strangers. I wish it wasn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. This is my main question to this lady. What is in your brain that makes you think that you can just yell at a complete stranger in a gym pool, where everyone has equal status, and it is quite reasonable to imagine there could be someone else close-by in the pool? Is this just another day in your life when you act like an entitled crazy person? So the lesson learned here was I will never get away with breaking these courtesy rules, don't bother trying.
The other confrontation happened with my sister and this could have had much more serious consequences. As you may or may not know I clean homes for a living and my sister is one of my clients. When she first asked me to clean her house, I didn't see any problem. I had been working in a hospital and was used to being around people in much more vulnerable positions and besides, I assumed they would never be home when I cleaned. Furniture is furniture after all. Well, the bathroom held up it's part of the bargain with it's neutrality but I was not always home alone doing my work. It got uncomfortable real fast. I would be cleaning on a Friday afternoon and they would be at home talking to each other. Not to me. I quickly felt like Cinderella and invisible as all domestic help tend to feel. They were paying me and it was just twice a month, I thought, Brenda, don't be a fool. Take their money. But the longer I cleaned there the more I hated it.
So last night I had enough. I thought, "Brenda, you know they would quit you if it suited their needs. It's not worth it." Normally it would not occur to me to quit a job through a text message but since I had been the recipient of a "We will no longer need your services text." TWICE now from other people, I thought it must be an okay thing to do. Getting on my phone I find a message sent to me last Friday when I cleaned for them telling me what to do with the dog. I assumed it was my sister's phone number. I type out the texts sounding more like we were breaking up than quitting a job. "It's not you, it's me. It just feels weird. You never did anything wrong." I push send. A minute later I get a response, "I think you sent this to the wrong number, did you mean to send this to me?" At first I say "yes" and then I quick check my contacts and realize this is not my sister's number, it must be my niece's number who lives with them. Oh shit! ABORT ABORT! I deny it saying "Oh that's the trouble with texting." My next thought is, will my niece just forget about this or will she say "Hey, I got this weird text from Brenda last night." I leave it alone and think quitting is harder than I thought.
Since I hadn't heard anything last night I thought, crisis averted. My niece accepted my explanation and I will just have to quit in a month or two. But I guess my niece and sister do have connected brain cells and my sister texts and asks "Were those texts meant for her?". Again my heart starts pounding. Shit. Fuck. Do I continue to deny or do I take advantage of this reopening and get out of this quagmire once and for all. I admit that yes, I do feel uncomfortable making sure to mention they have never done anything wrong. To my relief, my sister says she understood and thanked me for doing it as long as I did. I thanked her for understanding and it was over. So why was my heart still beating so fast and why did I feel like such a flake about wanting to quit? I asked myself is it really the confrontation that is so horrible? What was this really about?
I hate, despise, abhor the idea of people thinking badly about me. I realized just how much I want to control other people. I realized why I don't believe compliments from other people. I realized why I don't believe people when they say they care for me. Let me explain it like this. If you lie regularly, it's easy to understand and even expect that people are lying to you. If you do things just to be polite like I do, I assume people are just being polite to me. So when this lady just went off on me at the pool I felt trapped and confused. Why is it okay in her world to be so utterly rude? Why are her feelings more important than mine? Control is an illusive mistress who cooperates only occasionally but more importantly I am beginning to think knowing WHY people do what they do is not nearly so important as I thought. Trying to figure people out is exhausting. I thought if I knew people's motivations I was somehow in control. It is flawed logic. It is what a child does to attempt to control their environment. People are going to do what they are going to do. Letting go of this need to control other people's reaction and thoughts of me feels like such a break through and a relief.
Besides, when was the last time you saw a LIVE possum?
