Lord, fixers are exhausting! Even when you know their intentions are good....I feel suitably remorseful for any time i’ve been one tbh
A local chum yesterday simply refused to believe that I have money in the bank but won’t be able to get a mortgage for 2-3 years if then bc of the damage that MLC/PTSD did to my credit score and income. She asked, then refused to take my ‘no’ for a ‘no’ and launched into a ‘well, I can’t believe that, you need to do x and y’. Unusually for me, I became a bit testy
And my neighbour just stopped me and did much the same but with a scheme of how I could qualify for social housing bc I am no eligible for that bc too much money lol. If I tell you that his scheme involved getting on a train to France, opening a bank account and fraudulently hiding money there.....well, I got a bit testy again.
My house hunt is not going well. Not many houses to rent in this county. My car is broken. My mother is ill again. My landlord has just accepted an offer so the clock is ticking. Well, it feels more like one of those Bond style guillotines lol. And it’s raining so Gracie is grumpy. And i’m not sleeping well. Everything in my life is now infected by uncertainty. And I want to find the right kind of spot, not just a beggars can’t be choosers spot. It’s not easy. Fortunately my good LBS skills and natural optimism can be intentionally powered up every day but my word, it’s exhausting.
I wonder why we humans jump into fixing with a list of ‘you should do’ so quickly? Why we don’t go instead to ‘what could I do that would be helpful’? Another chum here did just that.....plus reminding me that I have a track record of being a very good problem solver and that I have made lemonade from far worse lemons lol....she is acting as my chauffeur to go look at a house tomorrow plus buying us a pub lunch. Much more helpful
Fixing is kind of inherently disrespectful, isn't It? Or so it seems to me. It carries an underpinning of ‘you’re too x to have thought of y and I am wiser’. I am conscious of my shame atm, well fear too, but shame is sloshing around. I owned my first property at 21.....I ran an international business I owned for over 25 years....I have fallen a long way financially from where I was. And I feel shame about where I am now, that I am as vulnerable and constrained as I am. Ha ha, and I have learned that shame makes me testy lol. My wise local chum and I were talking about this yesterday....I needed to talk in a warm safe place with a friend and a sympathetic schnauzer it turns out
.....and she challenged me a bit by asking if shame means I feel it’s my fault, that i’m to blame for what happened to me. That regret makes sense, but shame implies either competition against some expected standard in some way or that I am blaming myself. She’s right of course....and it was useful that she poked me to think about it bc shame is rather debilitating when you are trying to launch into the unknown
A lot of thing happened to me. Like weather. My only reasonable criticism of myself is perhaps that I didn’t know I needed an umbrella or that I stayed in the rain too long so got really, really wet. But it is also true that I do feel responsible for not safeguarding myself better, not for having PTSD but maybe for exposing myself to the point when I was vulnerable to it, maybe for not getting treatment earlier. I was not responsible for a lot of what brought me to this spot in life, so feel no shame about it, but I think I feel shame that I did not cope with it better. It’s perhaps a kind of arrogance. Which is weird bc, even if I didn’t do so well, I did the best I was able to do at the time.....even if it wasn’t much cop lol....and yet the shame is still there. Odd. And it’s an unfamiliar acquaintance bc I never experienced shame for the first fifty or so years of my life....odd and humbling tbh.
Today is a fresh day. I am having coffee. Grumpy Gracie is asleep on the bed. I will call my walking chum and go out for a wet walk and then start making house calls and working through my moving to do list. Bc I am packing even though I have no idea where I will be going
which in a strange way is a rather nice return of pre-ptsd efficiency and multi-tasking
I have a couple of months yet. I’ll figure a good next place out. I always have done so far and I will again. But my Babe-ishness is a bit under pressure so prayers and good thoughts gratefully received from afar
(and no fixer resoinses please lol bc I am not so nice when I am testy
)
T: 18 M: 12 (at BD) No kids.
H diagnosed with severe depression Oct 15. BD May 16. OW since April 16, maybe earlier. Silent vanisher mostly.
Divorced April 18. XH married ow 6 weeks later.
"Option A is not available so I need to kick the s**t out of Option B" Sheryl Sandberg