Some people get buyer's remorse. Some people get eater's remorse. Well, I get both of those, but I also get confrontation remorse. Let me explain.
It was a rough night in our house last night. For some reason Baby Bear was up twice (normally he sleeps through the night), and as I'm nursing, it was me who had to get up with him both times. While I was lying there nursing my sweet baby, super tired from not being used to midnight feedings anymore, the sound of Scott's heavy breathing started to iritate me more and more. I was up for nearly an hour both times. So, I finally make it back to sleep and at 5am our little terrier, Bruno, starts barking up a storm. Normally he sleeps inside (where he doesn't bark) but we let him out to go potty last night and forgot to let him back in. So there he was yapping away at 5am. I asked Scott to go bring him inside (since hello, I'd already been up twice). He went without complaining, but when Bruno ran away and refused to come inside, he just came back upstairs. He was in bed for all of 15 seconds when Bruno was at it again. Now I'm really wide awake and mad that Scott won't go back out to get him b/c he says he tried and Bruno just ran away.
Afraid that the neighbors will egg our house for letting our dog bark so early in the morning, I dragged myself out of bed and slipped on some shoes to lure our yappy little dog inside (who by this time was on my list too). Finally, about 10 minutes later I finally managed to trap Bruno in his crate and brought him inside. But by that time I was mad at Scott too. I came back up to our room and let him have it. And I didn't even keep my voice down. With sleep deprivation kicking in, I told him how rude it was of him to make me do that since I'd been up already twice that night, and how rude it was to just be ok with Bruno continuing to bark that early in the morning, disturbing the neighborhood, etc, etc. He shot back at me and before we knew it we were full on bickering at each other before the sun was even up. And since Baby Bear sleeps in our room, we woke him up too. Ugh. Great.
So anyway, the point of this story is that even though I felt that I was in the right and I was so irritated with Scott, when I woke up this morning I felt horrible about it all. Whenever I get into a fight with someone I love I get a big knot in my stomach and literally feel sick until the conflict is resolved. No matter if it's Scott, my parents, siblings, or friends, I just hate the feeling I'm left with after the dust settles on a confrontation. Heck, even minor spats with strangers I'll never see again get me upset. Some of the worst ones though, are the ones where I unintentionally anger someone or hurt their feelings. Those really get me because I feel so oblivious.
Don't get me wrong, in the heat of the moment I can sling barbs with the best of them. But I ALWAYS regret it and I tell myself to learn from the sick feeling I have and to avoid incendiary situations next time. Somehow I don't always learn my lesson. I have to say I've gotten much better at it in the past few years, but when it does happen, it leaves me feeling as awful as ever. I will literally replay the situation in my head a million times, wondering what else I could've said or done to have made things turn out better. It takes up a lot of mental energy and usually leaves me feeling more emotionally drained than the fight itself. Fortunately I usually only get into things with the people I love, so resolution is usually swift when we can talk it out and get back on track.
Not to worry, Scott and I talked later in the morning, when cooler heads prevailed, and smoothed each other's ruffled feathers. We're totally fine and can even chuckle about it now. But before that happened it had me thinking about how much I just hate fighting or being on the outs with people. I'm not a wallflower or a pushover, but I guess part of my learning curve in life is balancing my strong personality and quick temper with a rational head when I feel upset or slighted.
I don't expect everyone to like me, and I don't feel the need to be friends with everybody, but I do feel the need to know that I tried my best to be a kind and fair person, even when I'm angry. That doesn't always happen, but it's something I work very hard at. If I can be honest with myself and know that I've done my best to be kind and fair and someone is still angry with me or doesn't like me or whatever, I'm ok with that. Then it's in their court. I might still be bothered by it, but I'll at least know that I did everything I could.
I don't know if any of you all struggle with the same feelings, but writing it out makes me feel better, so thanks for reading. :)
3 comments:
Ohhhhh I can relate to you on SO many levels with this post. Without trying to leave a very lengthy comment, let me try to summarize.
First, I hear you on the night time thing. Taylor does not sleep through the night and never has since he was born. He is 7 months old now, and so getting up 2 to sometimes 4 times a night gets REALLY old, really frustrating, and really tiring. Will and I have also had little fights over who has to get up in the middle of the night. The hard part is that Taylor does NOT like Will in the middle of the night because he obviously can't nurse him. And so even when I'm dead tired and Will knows that it's his turn to go to Taylor, it's pointless because taylor ends up screaming even more than before and can't be calmed down unless I go in there. So then I get really mad like why do I always have to be the one sort of thing. LOL And I get all mad at Will even though it's technically his fault,...yaddi yadda yadda.
Second of all, you mentioned about how you can't stand that "feeling". We must be twins or something. I am the same way and absolutely can NOT handle ill feelings between myself and someone else. It bothers me to no end. (this is where Will and I greatly differ because if someone has beef with Will, he will just view it as their problem not his). We recently went through a horrible, awful ordeal with our previous landlords (the ones where we were living up until 2 months ago before we moved). We had lived there for 4 years and thought they were our friends. Turns out they secretly despised us for rediculous reasons, like, the fact that we never offered to help them with yardwork, or that we asked them to do maintenance requests. Things that they were SUPPOSEd to do as landlords but didn't feel they should have done. It was absolutely absurd. The husband (it was a husband/wife team) called me a "princess" among many other things just because I had asked them to fix some things that were broken. Anwyay, it's a long story. It was very sad to learn that they had these ill feelings towards us. They threatened to take us to court for money that they felt we owed them (which we did not owe them), just to be petty. It was such a hard situation and I cried many tears over it, and had many stressful anxiety feelings as well. I was not able to talk about it either, since our landlords were in our ward. And I couldn't blog about it or facebook about it either...because we had mutual friends. It was just a hard situation. I felt judged and wrongfully done. The only thing that kept us sane through the sitaution was knowing that we had done everything in our power to be Christlike towards them and WE knew that we had done nothing wrong. It was nice to know, through it all, that even though they were awful towards us and thought the msot horrible things towards us, that we knew we had done everything in our power to be kind, fair, and Christlike and there was really nothing else we could do. We were able to walk away from the situation with our heads held high.
Anyway. That was way more extreme that fighting about who has to get up with the baby, but hahaha you can know that I understand fully where you are coming from on this topic. :)
Lack of sleep plays such havoc with our lives. Before you know it, Baby Bear will be past his midnight feedings and you will be missing that special time with him. Understandable to get upset at the circumstanced...but glad you strive to get back on trach as soon as possible. We are sooo human!
Meant to say 'circumstances' and 'tack'!
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