After a good cry, my thoughts are still pretty jumbled, but if you ask me about it right now, I will tell you that I'm almost certainly moving soon. Soon as in a few months, or less perhaps. I presently feel absolutely terrible, and if I lived anywhere else I would not feel absolutely terrible, I would feel excited about my new window treatments. Instead, I am thinking about the hassle of returning all of that stuff I had such a good time acquiring yesterday; I am thinking about the hours my mom and I spent this afternoon rigging and arranging and generally being extremely frustrated until suddenly everything started looking fabulous; I am thinking about giving up the idea of doing anything that will make my apartment look prettier or more finished or cozy or pleasant to be in, anything that involves any holes at all. Have you ever tried decorating without putting any holes in anything? It doesn't work very well.
In the course of the twenty minutes it took her to avoid a simple "no" but convey that exact message along with a slew of depreciating comments and condescension, it was implied by a certain sour-faced landlady that people getting their first apartment (coughthiskidrightherecough) might not belong in her building because these type of people are so eager to put a myriad of new a creative decorating ideas into action - and her attic is no place for creativity or decoration. It's for blank walls and ugly old paint and dark screens that block out half of the sunlight and kill all of your remaining plants. And from a place like that, I've made a living space that is generally tolerable and boarder line pleasant to be in. But I can only do so much before I'm shut down, and she does it in such a thorough and soul-squelching way that I am loath to ask for permission to do anything ever again, until I ask for permission to move out.
...And reading over this I think I sound like a spoiled kid who is mad because someone told her No for once and she doesn't like it. But it's not the No, but the manner of the No that bothers me so much. And how I always want to be accommodating and try to compromise and generally be the nice, good, people-pleasing person I'm wired as, and I hate when that also makes me someone who is easy to make into a doormat. And standing up for myself is really hard to do, and when I DO try to really commit to an idea and fight for it (or at least don't back down for a few rounds and actually attempt to argue back instead...which always makes me feel funny) and it still gets vetoed, I don't know. It sucks. And it hurts my feelings when I bend over backward to make things fit into someone's crazy specifications and I still come off being treated as a disobedient trouble-maker who needs to be reminded of her place. Hurts my feelings and insults me and I'm in that situation so rarely that I really don't know how to operate within it, so of course I start crying. And I can't remember the last time someone said or did something that made me cry. Did the mean tech guy make me cry? I think I wanted to, but was able to hold off. Anyway. Gross night.
Tomorrow will be better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Oh my God. What a B. She will never ever be able to find someone as compromising as you again. She has no right to treat you like you're five. I can just hear the tone she must have used with you. I can't wait to help you decorate a new place. We'll paint the walls and put holes in the walls late into the night.
Post a Comment