Right now I have the addition of copious amounts of mucus and sinus pressure. I have a sinus infection. The drama queen in me says that I am suffering from Lint Lung. This is a self-diagnosed condition wherein the patient is systematically overexposed to human and animal detritus, allergens, and just plain old dirt. Right now it feels like the spiky points of tumble weeds are thrashing about my bronchial tubes with a switch blade. That's right, it's hurt when I cough. My right eye must still be sad over a Rom-Com it saw in 1984 because it won't stop weeping. And my sinuses, well, just say, my nose is having trouble keeping up. I am trying to paint you a picture of how I am feeling. Is it working? Can you feel my slight flush but somehow my skin is cool to the touch? I am tired but when I close my eyes I can't sleep. When I try to work around the house a little, I walk from room to room trying to remember why I came in there for the first place.
This is my 3rd day of being home from work. The beauty of being self-employed is that when I call and tell my client I can't work that day, there is no supervisor telling me I need a doctor's note or that I will be getting written up for missing too many days. But when you have one employer, you only have to make one phone call. And though your supervisor may be audibly irritated for you making their job more difficult, once you push that "end call", that's it. Now imagine if you worked for someone you could liken to your mother. Did you know that once you are mother, you can take those shame inducing abilities and apply it to situations outside of your own brood? It's true. Once you take the Erma Bombeck's course, "Guilt, The Gift That Keeps on Giving". (This is an actual quote of hers) you are free to make even the check out girl at the Piggly Wiggly feel like she forgot it was Mother's Day. At this point, you saying to yourself "Calm down Brenda, the whole world is NOT out to get you!". Oh, I know this on an intellectual level. Just tell that people pleaser drinking the Orange Julius in the Food Court.
I first noticed how other people's mothers could make feel guilty as a child. If I was a friend's house and she was getting trouble for not having done the dishes; I think I got upset than she did. In medical terms, some experts say this is not having a strong sense of self or a childlike response to stress which your inclination is to make everything about them. Sounds about right to me. But as an adult in the break room at Walmart while casually discussing why I never had children and my coworker mother says to me "Well, I just knew it couldn't always be about me." Now back then I believed she was responding to some magical vibe I had placed into the atmosphere. Just how did she know how selfish I am? Does she have a voodoo doll of me in her locker? The years pass and when I heard someone say, probably Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura, "If the same thing keeps happening to you over and over, look for the common denominator. You" This made sense to me. I was broken. In my mind, everybody else in the world had their shit together except me. Ever slowly, I started giving up. You could see it in my jobs. I started applying for jobs that required less and less out me to alleviate stress. I used to have to deal with public at many of my jobs but it all just became too much. The work was hard enough without all these constant demands of trying to please the world. Even now, I have this anxiety balloon hanging over my head because I still feel like crap. If I need to cancel the job I rescheduled for Saturday morning should I call now? This customer was clearly put out when I cancelled yesterday it's one thing to sit here and type, it's quite another to clean a house.
Now I believe I am a player in every one of these scenarios but I don't think there is something wrong with me. People gravitate towards others for a reason. So it stands to reason, you may be attracted to the same version of a person in a different body over and over. If I present myself as easy going, a stronger person may use my personality to their advantage. The primitive in that person says, "Me think Brenda no danger. Me dump some of my poo on her head. See how she respond." The pleaser personality will unconsciously start doing behavior that will win the favor of the aggressor. What will happen if the pleaser doesn't take their role of the submissive. The more aggressive person, for their own reasons, don't like to feel challenged so they start becoming more aggressive until they see the pleaser getting back into the role they are comfortable seeing them in. And thus the cycle continues for this relationship.
Do I sound like I just feebly copied this from a text book and put it in my own awkward text? Not this time anyway. I am basing all this from my own life, my own experiences and though I found my role early in life, I can clearly remember a time as a child where other people's feelings were really secondary. I can remember looking at my young classmates and thinking, "Hmm that's weird what they are doing over there". Then back to "Oh, they are having chocolate milk for lunch today." I remember the unsolicited opinions about my very bright hair and my bevy of polyester pants (homemade by my grandma in both peach and chartreuse) with loosely matching short sleeved pullover sweatshirts. I never cared what I wore. It just didn't seem important to me until someone else decided it was important to me. I say all this only to say that I want to get back to that little girl. I mean, give me a fucking break, it was the 1970's after all. And even though I really liked it on Ricki Lake when she did her shows titled, "I was ugly in high school but look at me now", I don't have have any revenge fantasies. I write all this for me because organizing your thoughts in a somewhat cohesive essay does help reinforce the message. But you still can't sit by me at lunch, so there.
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