I spent yesterday on the pity-pot, piling one “sorry” thing that had ever happened to me on top of another. Rough day. At home I exhausted myself doing chores, on warrior mode – “Life is hard bitch, stop crying.”
In the basement, I took a neighbor’s clothes out of the washer because it had stopped, and they weren’t there. I might have given them a few minutes, but I wanted to go out later and didn’t have time to wait. When I came back, they had posted a note on a drier that had stopped, with their clothes still in there, “Please do not remove my clothes.”
I was on fire. I had a target for the anger welling in me for two weeks. I went upstairs and wrote a reply, saying that they had a lot of nerve, that they were selfish… I wouldn’t have dared removing the clothes under these circumstances, as I said in the note, because I wasn’t trying to fight with my neighbors. Haha, but I was.
My neighbor came down and claimed the note. “I was about to post this note on top of yours – you can’t do this. You can’t make people wait because you don’t want them touching your clothes (He was being a diva.) It isn’t considerate. I make it my business to be here on time out of consideration for my neighbors. If I can’t make it, I have no problem with people taking my clothes out.”
He disagreed. I put my hand up and told him that I wasn’t going to argue, because his retort was ridiculous.
I was so angry that I left my clothes downstairs. I punched the elevator door, several times. My right hand is still sore today. I think the whole building heard, “my anger.”
I didn’t want to hit him. He just didn’t understand why this was inconsiderate. I wasn’t communicating effectively to him. I was angry at this conflict at the end of a crappy day. Angry at life.
I thought about apologizing – I also threw something — slammed doors really hard. We used to say hello, but now maybe I’ll just have a look of approachability, wiping the slate clean of the conflict. It’s better not to approach someone right after an incident. In the heat of anger, after leaving the basement and punching and throwing and slamming doors, I banged out a letter to management, asking them to mediate.
If I had more emotional equilibrium, I would have done this in the first place, without confronting my neighbor – and — I would have used different phraseology – in the subject line of the email I typed “EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” So that was insane. As they say, when angry, refrain from sending that letter, email or text, or from approaching someone, until you have simmered down.
On the cosmic vibe note, yesterday was the date last year, when something so crappy happened to me that I even remember the date. Hmmmm…
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