Keep Your Eyes on Your Own Page

Sister Sarge aka Sister Mary Magdalene used to tell us that way back in First Grade.  I would hear it repeatedly during my elementary school years as a way to discourage cheating from one another.  Really all it did was force the kids who were gonna cheat to be more creative, which they did.  Elaborate code coughing, AMSLAN using, Morse code pencil tapping, crib sheet hiding pros bloomed in their place.

I was not one of those kids.  Learning for me is like crack and I was that kid who took all the books home and poured over them BEFORE CLASSES STARTED.  My favorite day in college was always the day I spent obscene amounts of money on books that would depreciate to nothing as soon as I stepped out the door with them.  In my 19 years as a student, I cheated on only one test, AP European Studies Music.  Nope, I have always been the kind of person who succeeded or failed by their own hand.  There were many successes as you might expect, but there were also a few spectacular failures.  Those failures spurring me on to do better.

No one ever explained that this system, while it works perfectly in a school setting, does not work at all in real life.  Don't get me wrong.  It applies to work in so much as you have to get there on time and accomplish what you were hired to do or brave the consequences.  Sometimes you experience failure through no fault of your own and no amount of doing better, working harder, longer, giving more etc will change that.  Trying those things only digs you in deeper.  That has been a recipe for exploding my life over and over - to encounter one of these failures that I can't do anything about.  I'm kinda in another one right now.

This time though I am going to try a different approach.  Any scientist worth their weight in labcoats and beakers knows that it is futile to expect different results when you conduct an experiment repeatedly and change none of the parameters.

While I was in Portland a lot of feelings came up around someone I considered a good friend but who stiffed me for a lot of money last year for some writing I did for him.  Money that I could really use.  Money that he could easily generate if he chose to, which he does not.  Not only did he stiff me the money, he kept the work product and refused to send it back.  I don't know how you justify doing that in your head.  But whatever.  I have been very angry about that for the last year.  OK.  I am still angry about it.  And just before I left, I got a newsletter in which he talked about writing yet another book.  That set the whole thing off AGAIN.

The killer here is that I have tried to address the issue and gotten nowhere.  So I am left standing with the boiling pot of anger where my stomach should be while he tools around the globe all carefree.  THAT is the place I lost my mind in Portland.  That unknowingly pried the door to the crazy behaviour closet open.  You know the one I'm talking about.  Don't even pretend you haven't stalked someone on FB or dialed the house of an ex and then hung up.  So as I caught myself reading his newest newsletter and fuming, I recognized that the crazy closet had been breeched and immediate action needed to taken.

The closet crazies like to stick my finger in the socket over and over through any media possible just to see how high they can make me jump or how big a puddle they can reduce me to.  (I don't know what's in it for them, but they are very good at their jobs).  In this case their mission seemed to be to keep that seething sub-surface anger alive in the pit of my belly.  The problem with stomach anger is that you can be generally unaware of it most of the time, but small things that you used to deal with easily make your stomach feel like you're suddenly firing up a Weber grill down there.  Every food suddenly annoys your stomach.  You are hungry all the time.  Anger needs a lot of caloric fuel.  Your belly hurts.  You get short with people who have no idea what's going on.  You erupt the hot coals on them and push away the very people you need.

The totally sick thing is that the person who is paying the price for this is not my friend.  It's me.  Yes, I got screwed over.  But, now the crazies are labeling boxes and urging me to move to hell permanently.  Hold on there Babalou.  I have been there.  I didn't like it.  No welcome wagon.  Bad neighborhood.  No resale value.

One way to combat the closet crazies is to take direct action against them.  In this case I hid the electrical socket by taking charge of the electronic media.  I unsubscribed from his newsletter and unfriended him on FB to prevent unsolicited communication that might start the whole crazy cycle over again.  I stowed the copy of the book I wrote for him in a subfolder of a subfolder in the bowels of my computer so that I would not be forced to look at the folder every day on the desk top that said in big neon letters "HE FUCKED ME OVER"  (No, it isn't really titled this.  It's called _____'s Book).  I would delete it, but I did write it and maybe someday he will honor his word to me.  Yes, I still hold that thought in my heart because not to closes the door on the possibility forever.  

I will try to forgive him for what he did, what he is doing.  Not for him, but for me.  Because I know that forgiveness is really a gift for me and no one else.  Until then, I am following Sister Sarge's advice and keeping my eyes on my own page.