A Portland Reboot

Yeah, I know.  I'm one of those people who likes to turn things over in my head long after it has happened.  Dissect a piece that felt bad down to its component parts and see if I can find the canker that created the yuck.  It drives some of my friends BON-KERS!  Usually I wait until the emotion has drained out of it.  I don't do it for anyone but me.  So that I can learn a bit about what makes me tick and clear up useless behavioral boogeyman programs.  Survivors accumulate these like loose change in the couch cushions, hundreds maybe even thousands of defense mechanisms and survival skills.

After the abuse is over, even though they serve no purpose any longer, they don't go away.  They pop their evil little heads up at inopportune moments to bite me a reminder of how things were, then scurry back down into their twisty tunnels leaving me to deal with the aftermath.  They don't do this in the places where you might expect it, they are tricksey that way.  Equally tricksey, I have learned how to dig them out of their tunnels like a rat terrier, bonk them on the head with a big shovel and move on.  So, lest you think I am completely insane, I will tell you that I have successfully routed most of the little bastards, but a few still elude me.

Anyway, I had one of these in Portland.  Robbed of a true childhood, I sometimes will become an intractable toddler and have a tantrum.  It's very rare these days.  Portland definitely saw one of these.  But this time, it was diffused in the kindest of manners.   Duz simply chose to take me someplace that he knew I liked and had been happy - the tea shop - where we passed a most pleasant afternoon.

It won't be until a week later that I realize why that worked to diffuse the whole thing.  Because in the midst of the angst and drama, someone else listened to me when I told them what I needed and they chose to defer what they wanted in order to give me what I needed.  What a great gift.  I didn't come in a little turquoise box, but it was worth so much.  I can't say I have ever experienced it before, someone chosing me over themselves RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DRAMA.  It felt good.  Drama went POOF!  I want more of this please.  People willing to make drama poof with me.

I am the one who generally defers to someone else's needs or desires.  Someone who creates drama poof for other people.  But if I am always drama poofing other people, then my needs are never met and how am I happy?  I'm sure that's how I have ended up alone for so long.  The only way that my needs have gotten met in the past is if I do it for myself.  I have done this for so long, that I had simply stopped looking for someone out there to ever do it for me.  By deferring my own needs so frequently, I have forgotten how to let someone else care for me and I have cheated the people around me of the pleasure of creating drama poof for someone else.  Being on either end of this is a lovely experience.  Being always on one end or the other is unhealthy.

RUH ROH RAGGY!  That feels like the vermin piece right there.  Time to bonk it.  Shovel please.