Red Exclamation Point

I have realized that I am carrying around some hostility. There is an underlying current of frustration and sadness and until this morning I could not put my finger on it. After a terse morning with my husband and time to quietly reflect, it hit me. Everyone’s everything is more important than my anything.

This is big news and requires a giant red exclamation point, like the kind you put on an important email or priority item. I have been shoving my feelings down inside and just letting things go for so long that I did not even realize what was happening until this morning when the fact that some mail I had asked to be shredded was still on the counter several days past my breaking point. There are many other things happening here at Casa Beadle that have me feeling unimportant and servant like, but the fact that when I mentioned my annoyance (or aggravation) about the papers (still piled on my counter) I received a in kind aggravated response it put me in a tail spin. I am actually trying to control the urge to just cover this entire page with red exclamation points.

How did things get to this point? When did I quietly slip away? I consider myself a pretty straight forward person. I usually speak my mind and I do not have a problem speaking up when I do not agree with something, yet here I am being smacked in the face with the fact that I have just given up. It was a slow quiet process and I didn’t even sense what was happening. At odd moments I would think to speak up and then I would stop myself with a quiet reminder to myself (in my head) that it was not worth the energy…that nothing will change.

So today is a new day, one of my favorite quotes is from Gandhi “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I would like to say that my day started as me being the change, but what I was, was an angry frustrated woman who was allowing everyone’s everything to be more important than my own anything. I was now snarping and bitter rather than just saying the truth of what was happening and not allowing it to continue.

I want to be the change.

The real trick will be getting the rest of this household to change too. People here are used to me saying things, but now I am getting serious and it could become uncomfortable…for everyone. I have thrown my feelings out from time to time, but when the chips were down, I would reel those same feelings back in so that there were no ruffled feathers. Do not get me wrong, I have still ruffled feathers but usually it is when I have kept quiet for too long and instead of just being point blank, I become a bottle rocket.

For now I will hold off on the red exclamation points and just try to work through this situation a little more calmly than I did this morning. I do not take pride in sending anyone out into the world with a bad attitude in the morning and for that I owe my husband an apology. I do however believe that at some point I need to reclaim the Me that I want to be and pack away this person that I do not know and really do not like. I do not have a problem with everyone else’s everything being important, as long as it does not come at the expense of my anything.