Rocks on, rocks off
Jan. 19th, 2014 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feldmanAs a generally composed and easy-going person, there tends to come a moment when someone who is getting to know me realizes that, yes, as a matter of fact I can manage confrontation pretty well. In most instances without breaking my veneer of detached calm. It's a mental martial art I learned in my thirties, this ability to pick my battles instead of letting others do so, and then following through ruthlessly. The more I practice it, the less stress I have in my life.
It's a virtuous circle. When life hands you shit, don't eat the shit. You may have to use it build a fucking cob house to live in for a while, and burn it for fuel, but just don't eat the damned stuff. So the next time you're handed a steaming pile, you're at least dry and kinda warm and you aren't poisoned by a bellyful of someone else's crap.
Because yes, there's always a next time. But I'm learning, as I did crossing the flyer-infested quad back in college, that someone trying to hand you X does not equate to you taking X into your hand.
It always gives me a perverse satisfaction when someone who's mistaken easy-going for passive goes down the wrong path of the decision tree, is brought up short, and then fucking loses it to no effect whatsoever. Their rage is just so much sunlight trying to move a mountain.
I used to be the sunlight in such situations, blazing away and only blistering off a layer of lichen. It's delightful to be solid granite in the shape of my choosing.
It's a virtuous circle. When life hands you shit, don't eat the shit. You may have to use it build a fucking cob house to live in for a while, and burn it for fuel, but just don't eat the damned stuff. So the next time you're handed a steaming pile, you're at least dry and kinda warm and you aren't poisoned by a bellyful of someone else's crap.
Because yes, there's always a next time. But I'm learning, as I did crossing the flyer-infested quad back in college, that someone trying to hand you X does not equate to you taking X into your hand.
It always gives me a perverse satisfaction when someone who's mistaken easy-going for passive goes down the wrong path of the decision tree, is brought up short, and then fucking loses it to no effect whatsoever. Their rage is just so much sunlight trying to move a mountain.
I used to be the sunlight in such situations, blazing away and only blistering off a layer of lichen. It's delightful to be solid granite in the shape of my choosing.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-21 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-22 01:42 pm (UTC)I felt backed into a lot of horrid situations, and occasionally flipped out like a cornered animal, and eventually through too much practice and painful self-observation began to see where I was, maybe not contributing, but *allowing* things to worsen by not nipping it in the bud when people tested my boundaries.
There's a certain misanthropy in it, when someone tests your boundary of what you'll put up with, to see it as a possible scouting mission to see if they can take further liberties.
It goes against some societal programming to stop being gracious about it these incursions, to nip them in the bud, and it takes practice to choke down the urge to apologize or rationalize or emotionally flail. It takes being okay with the idea that you're hurting someone's feelings--often that's all it is, an idea in your head, because thwarting someone from taking is not the same as hurting them.
But yeah, the journey for me entailed a lot of jaw clenching, tooth grinding, stress headaches, a couple bouts of pneumonia, some really shitty job situations I endured for way too long, a feeling of desperation I wrestled with for years, and someone by my side who kept saying the most outrageous things that turned out to be Reason.