The Wrath of Ass!!!!!!!!!!

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…

“L”

I met “L” in 1985.  “Where are you from,” I asked.  “From England.  I’m part Nigerian, like Sade,” she said with a hint of sass in that English accent.  It was a cool association.  Sade was all the rage then.  I was twenty-two.  I prejudged “L” as this urbane creature who’d never hang out with the likes of me.

But we wound up at the local diner with mutual friends a few times.  We went with a group to a Patti Labelle concert — it was horrible – Patti Labelle had feathers all over her, screaming, walking back and forth like a duck.  “L” and I became friendly.  She helped me to get my first apartment in her building.  She gave me a starter plate, fork and knife from her own dishes.

Years after I had moved, I found that “L” had moved to my neighborhood.  She had been using a hairdresser up here for years.  We had dinner together.  I used her hairdresser.  “You were referred by “L”?  She’s a good person.  She never complain,” said the Dominican hairdresser.  This is “L’s” hallmark – an upbeat, humble disposition, nothing like the idea I had of her when we first met.  We’ve since hung out a few times.

I saw her before my second mammogram a couple of weeks ago.  I was in bad shape because it hit when all this other stuff was happening.  “Do you want me to come with you Sandee?”  “L” said.  “Are you sure?  It could be hours,” I said, then I thought of my morning episode with panic and self-pity, and told her that I would appreciate it if she came.

For the trip there and in the waiting room, “L” was a pleasant distraction.  She spoke matter-of-factly about getting through her own trials.  She hadn’t been depressed or angry at the world because these things had happened.  She was simply glad to have had resources to take care of them.  I learned how I might get through a trial without self-pity and anger, which had become my best friends again.  We talked and laughed in the waiting room.  She was thrilled when the nurse said that we’d have to go to the other waiting room where there would be soda, coffee, and snacks.  She was all set up with her crossword puzzle, coffee and graham crackers when the nurse came for me.

Way back, because of ignorance, her kindness was unexpected — I had stereotyped a very attractive woman with an English accent.  “L” was a powerful example for me that day.  I accepted help in an emotional time and got more than that.  I had also witnessed her kindness to other people and it had a great effect on me as this was clearly a consistent trait of hers.  Remembering her being this way in the past made the impact stronger.  I only hope to be able to pass on what I learned from her in a rippling effect because it was such a gift.

Your reward for reading this whole thing is a Sade song about a commitment to a relationship — a different kind of relationship than the one that I spoke of but hey, she’s Nigerian and English, just like “L”:

This is my very first blog post! Aside from my facebook friends, I don’t think anyone else really saw it… It’s a great idea, I think.  It’s where I got the idea for the name of my blog.

1800ukillme

 

Once this has been totally legalized, these would be a great idea.  The mobiles could be painted in bright designs, to take the stigma out of euthanasia – inside the mobile could be a party atmosphere.  We could have some with pictures of beautiful women and men surrounded by clouds, hands out, beckoning, calling those thinking of suicide to ‘come, come’, ‘you can do it.  I did!’  The truck could have a theme too, like an ice cream truck.  It’d be rolling down the street playing Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’.   The slogan would be ‘Come, let’s just put you out of all of that ‘ol misery.’

You see my biggest fear is that I’d shoot myself in the head, miss the important artery and wind up being a vegetable.  Or I’d hang myself, the rope breaks right where my brain’s been starved to the point of…

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