Recent Successes and Struggles

October has been a weird month for me. Among other things, I dealt with some more car trouble. Oddly, while that would normally stress me out more than anything else, it was actually the least stressful thing for me this month. The remainder of this post will talk a bit about the car issues and will mostly focus on other, more stressful things October has brought me thus far.

I got my car’s interior cleaned, disinfected, and detailed last month after a dead mouse created a huge mess on the front passenger floor. Earlier this month, I noticed a bad smell when I drove, especially on hot days. That turned out to be algae blocking the ac drain hose. Shortly after getting that sorted out, I had the thermostat, coolant, hoses, and a few other things replaced. Fortunately, all of that was easily affordable for me, and my car runs well now. While it was stressful to go through all that, I’m glad it all got worked out fairly quickly and for far less money than I feared it would cost.

The most stressful part of October for me was standing up to a bully early last week. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the option to not be around each other. I hope that will happen someday, and sooner rather than later. Fortunately, despite fears that standing up to him would end badly, it actually turned out wonderfully. To my surprise, the exchanges we had stayed at the level of words without escalating to violence, I had the support of everybody else around us, we’ve hardly interacted at all since that day, and he’s stopped bullying me! That has never happened to me before, so I feel relieved and excited that it went as well as it did, both that day and all the days since.

However, I’ve been wondering if the increased confidence I’ve had since standing up for myself will turn out badly. While those with true confidence don’t need to put others down to make themselves feel better by comparison, pride can easily masquerade as confidence and result in those with lots of pride behaving badly. To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, I hope that my newfound ability to stand up to bullies won’t turn me into a bully.

Putting that bully in his place and some kind words from a dear friend have got me rethinking a few of my ideas, some of which I talked about in this post last year. I don’t believe as much as I used to in the approach of having no enemies by turning them all into friends. While that is certainly ideal, and I tip my hat to anyone who can do it, it either doesn’t always seem possible or at least desirable to me. Hence my current focus on doing my best to communicate well and be kind while still setting and maintaining boundaries. Since I’ve gotten better at working through my emotions, I suppose I could work through the guilt of standing up for myself and not using the top communication tools I know all the time, especially when a boundary would work better.

I hope that this recent increase in courage and confidence won’t turn into pride, egotism, and bullying on my part. The fact that I even have that concern in the first place makes me think that it won’t. That’d be wonderful as I’ve struggled my whole life with either walking all over others or letting them walk all over me rather than finding that higher middle way of having boundaries without being a jerk. Since I no longer have my dog Sawyer to help me recover from the tough times and remind me of the importance of love in a world in which humans have steadily gotten meaner, the fear of becoming like those I can’t stand has grown larger since his death. I hope that the animal and human loved ones I still have will celebrate my successes, gently get me back on track if I lose my way, and help me become all I can be.