Now here’s a task that I can definitely sink my teeth into. The directive: “Stand up for yourself! If only for today, tell people how you feel.” Whoa! This is truly awesome! Permission to vent, to kvetch, to bitch and piss and moan to my heart’s content.
But wait … that’s not what it said, is it? It said to stand up for myself. And while I don’t want my “self” to be a doormat, I don’t really want it to be the dragon lady either. Sigh. It’s more of this balance stuff again, isn’t it?
So let’s rethink this task. A friend of mine once rattled off this one-liner she learned in Al-Anon: “Say what you mean but don’t say it mean.” At the time I thought it was totally lame, but it was one of those things that stuck in my head. Kinda like Taylor Swift songs. “When you’re 15 … somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe him …” (See? Now you’ve got the ear worm. Told ya!)
But back to the subject at hand:
Is there a way to stand up for myself, to tell people how I feel without going from zero to bitch in 10 seconds? Today I am going to find out …
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My first opportunity turned out to be a missed one, in a way. Without going into detail (name withheld to protect the guilty), a person who has been causing a lot of grief in my life and the lives of some of my friends once again decided to create drama. Although I had a chance to say what was on my mind, I chose to remain silent, basically because I doubted that anything I had to say would be received well. Or even rationally. And it probably would have resulted in harsh words, raised voices and very possibly a felony. Sometimes standing up for myself means sitting down and shutting up.
The next opportunity came when my son (the one who will not friend me) called me. This is a fairly uncommon occurrence, and as luck would have it his phone died mid-conversation and we finished our “talk” via text messaging. Ours is a relationship filled with sarcastic humor, but today I had something serious to impart. So after our requisite banter, I texted him some parental advice about looking for a job. It’s amazing how silent a phone's texting function can get! But at least I did not miss my chance to remind him that the First National Bank of Mom & Dad was not planning on extending him any more credit in the near future. Sometimes standing up for myself means I don’t get to win the popularity contest.
And my last opportunity to stand up for myself came when FedEx failed to pick up a package I’d scheduled for pickup the day before. More than a little angry, I called the 800 # and went through their menu of five billion options that didn’t fit my situation before finally being offered a customer service representative. Of course that person was not located in America – is anyone? And of course, although she was most apologetic, as CSRs are trained to be, there was nothing that could be done to get the package there on time without incurring more expense, even though I escalated the problem to the supervisory level (this time someone in Cincinnati, praise God) and from there to tech support. The bottom line is that the person who wrote the instructions for the FedEx website undoubtedly does not claim English as his or her mother tongue. I do this stuff for a living. If I can’t follow the instructions, they are obviously unclear. And probably designed to create new “revenue streams” for FedEx when missed deliveries occur. After about 15 minutes on the phone, I could feel my blood pressure rising and my inner bitch screaming to get out. So I cut the conversation short with a promise to take my business elsewhere, and hung up. Sometimes standing up for myself means recognizing a lose-lose situation and walking away.
So what have I learned about standing up for myself? That it's not always easy, that it doesn't always have a happy ending, and that it doesn't always result in everything going my way. But it still feels good to know that I exhausted all the options, took care of myself, and can now leave the outcome up to the Big Guy.
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