For context see A Wrench in My Plans or A Bump in the Road - Day 102
Written this morning:
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel anxious and nervous about having to deal with my apartment manager today, having to face him and face this situation / "problem."
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I will just give up and suppress myself in an effort to make for like "smooth sailing" so that there is not conflict, to just sweep it under the rug like I saw done so many times in my family with conflict, to swallow my feelings and push it all down / bottle it up so that this conflict can just be over with.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create this relationship with "conflict" that centers around anxiety, nervousness, and fear.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to evade this situation by leaving my apartment and going somewhere else.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to evade facing this situation by asking a friend or relative to come over and help me talk to my apartment manager because I am so fearful that I will mess it up or become reactive or will just suppress and be okay with him continuing to do whatever shitty job he wants to do.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself then to also fear how whomever I might ask to come help me might react to my apartment manager, where if it is my mom I become afraid that she will also bend over and sweep it all under the rug, allowing herself to be manipulated into sympathy, or if it is my brother or my mom's boyfriend they will become angry and reactive which also will not assist in a practical best for all resolution to this "problem."
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to believe that I am capable of finding and/or facilitating such a solution.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed now at the idea of possibly moving, of where I would move, of thinking of moving to the apartment complex that my brother is about to move into, which is a nice apartment complex, but then also to think about how I prefer to keep some distance between myself and my brother because I am not good at establishing boundaries and I fear that I will get too wrapped up in his problems or that he will insert himself into my life more than I want.
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to just stand clear in stability as myself no matter what is happening around me, so that in this situation of "conflict" I can navigate the communication in self honesty and self responsibility, or within the potential of being my brother's neighbor I could set clear boundaries as what is best for all.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to learn, imprint, and adopt what I saw in my mother in terms of a failure to set clear boundaries that are fair, self honest, based in equality and oneness, are self responsible, and are what is best for all.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, despite always watching my mother lack a spine and criticizing her and believing that I can see clearly what she should do, nonetheless collapse within my own life where it is like I extract my own spine or believe it to not be there so that I cannot stand clear, tall, in stability within myself in setting boundaries for myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to bend over backwards to meet the needs of others, allowing myself to be manipulated by the emotional states of others, allowing myself to feel and then act on feelings of sympathy for others, so that I neglect and reject myself as my own self care, self support, and my actual practical needs, and also thusly reject, neglect, deny what is best for all in equality and oneness and in my obligation to take responsibility for myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself build up nervous energy about this situation so that I am then acting on nervous energy, trying to navigate strategically how I can like "win" in this situation where to "win" means to get my way / what I want / what is owed to me as a paying tenant, but also because of the nervous energy to "win" means to one-up the other person, to convince myself within interaction / communication that I am "right" so that the nervous energy will dissipate, because the nervous energy is fear that I am wrong.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I am "wrong" where within this fear I am fearing that my needs are not substantial or valid, that my perspective is not valid, that the services I pay for should not actually be given to me because I do not matter, I am just in the way, I am causing trouble, these are not real problems.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to learn and carry with me this dynamic from my family where what I saw as problematic within my family was denied by other members of my family as well as friends and acquaintances, so that no problem / conflict was ever properly faced / addressed, so that I became very confused and paranoid because what I saw in the reality around me did not match / line up with what others communicated to me about reality, and also what I experienced within myself as my emotions and fears and reactions were not validated by the people around me as appropriate / expected given the circumstances.
So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt myself as who I am within conflict because I believe that my experiences and perspectives do not matter because in the past they did not matter, what I said / saw made no difference to anyone whatsoever and in fact only threatened myself as my ability to sustain myself / survive because what mechanisms I used to "cope" were self-abusive, but I knew no other way.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to turn conflict inward on myself such that when I am facing outer conflict in interactions with other people, I react in such a way that I turn the conflict in on myself, not trusting myself, doubting myself, believing myself to be the problem, believing that the fact that I have identified a problem is what is problematic to others, and thus wanting to punish myself, shut myself up, believing I am stupid and in the way, and why can't I just deal with this by myself and not bother anyone else with my stupid petty problems.
I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself thus to become all the more defensive and reactive as I am believing that others do not see my perspective or experiences as valid and so as I perceive an attack from outside and also suffer from my own attacks on myself, my defenses grow and I become more reactive.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to run through these patterns as this program of conflict within myself as my reactions to conflict rather than breathing and facing "conflict" for what it is as the interactions / communication required to navigate an identified problem in reality with another person / system.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to retreat into myself through reaction and then beliefs/judgments about myself or about the situation / "conflict" so that within this I am not "showing up" here in the present reality moment to face what is happening or to follow through on that which is required of me in order to support myself in self honest self responsibility, but instead am still utilizing the coping mechanisms within my mind of reaction, judgment, blame, and self-abusive thoughts.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I do not know what to do within this situation such that I have created like this road block / mental block in terms of considering my options and investigating what is best, and instead have created a reliance / dependency on having another decide for me, which in this case is most likely to be my mom or another member of my family, who will be reactive within wanting to "protect" me and want to enable me to evade conflict by removing me from a situation that they identify as "bad" rather than assisting and supporting me to actually face the conflict and also to face myself to come up with my own self honest solution for myself, to determine for myself what is best, as this would be real support and assistance, as opposed to simply encouraging the removal of myself from the situation, which is often what is suggested even in for example conflict with friends, like "you don't need that in your life," rather than seeing myself as my responsibility in the creation of the conflict, taking responsibility for myself in that build up, and then also taking responsibility for myself within finding a self honest solution that is best for all, which may or may not be removal from the situation.
So I commit myself to really breathe deep slow breaths and be here with myself in my human physical body in physical reality as accomplishing that which must be accomplished in reality -- not what I identify as needing to be accomplished in my mind as my emotional reactions / fears -- and to write out / investigate my options and consider what it is that I would really like to do.
Do I want to move? Where to? Why or why not?
Do I want to talk to the landlord about my apartment manager? What would I say? Why or why not?
I need to talk to my apartment manager, obviously. What do I say? How do I say it? What outcomes need to be supported? What outcomes are self-interested and based on my emotional reactions?
Do I want to live somewhere that my apartment manager and other neighbors sexually harass me, although I have never communicated that I identify it as such? Do I want to live somewhere that my apartment manager talks to my neighbors about me in a negative way? Do I want to live somewhere that the apartment manager is not supported to do his job with integrity, and who seemingly would not do his job with integrity even if he was supported? Do I want to live somewhere that the apartment manager is manipulative with complaints of his physical and emotional well-being, where I allow myself to generate sympathy toward him and then act based on that sympathy to like cut him some slack or give him a break, which really benefits no one as it leaves me high and dry in terms of services for which I pay and allows him to continue to abdicate responsibility for himself and creates probability that this will happen to someone else? What of that is my responsibility? Is it most self responsible to just move, and let other consequences flow as they might for others involved? Am I trying to get my hands dirty? Are my hands already dirty? Can I live here even under these circumstances of not trusting my apartment manager? Is that setting myself up for disaster if I cannot clear myself of my lack of trust and a high probability for a build up of resentment? What if something breaks in my apartment and I have to deal with him again?
What is it that I like so much about living here that I am attached to even despite all of the many reasons that I do not particularly like living here?
"Pros":
It is a great location in terms of groceries, family, work, and access to the bike trail. I enjoy my hard wood floors but for reasons well within my control I have not utilized them for practicing yoga at home as was the intended purpose of finding an apartment with hard wood floors (my #1 priority on my list when I was apartment hunting in December) -- so now if I leave it will be like "all for nothing". There is a big park next door where people let their dogs run around off leash and this is great for Hazel. The apartment itself is big and I have finally established furniture arrangements that I like and I have finally cleared points that were previously preventing me from enjoying this space (again, I can do this anywhere, but it is frustrating!).
"Cons":
However I do not get cell reception in my apartment and that is very frustrating. My neighbors are pretty sketchy and most are decidedly drug addicts, which is fine, but I do not always feel safe as there has been a history of break ins by neighbors. Another neighbor also repeatedly sexually harasses me. My next door neighbors / friends are moving soon anyway. There is a pool here but I do not use it because it is dirty and I do not wish to invite further sexual harassment by walking around in a bathing suit (walking around in yoga clothes is bad enough).
The apartments I most likely could move into are actually the same ones I lived in when I first moved back from Denver, but due to employment problems I had to break my lease and move back in with my mom briefly, then get a roommate. Now they are under new management (which is great because I did not particularly care for the old management, although either way there are MANY people on staff as opposed to here where there is just this one man who is expected to take care of everything) and are even a little less expensive than they used to be (less expensive in fact than where I live now). They are across the street from my brother/sister-in-law/nieces' house, and my other brother will be moving into the complex very soon (I have thought about getting a 2 bedroom with him but since I have reservations even about being his neighbor I am not sure I am ready to take on being his roommate). They are still a decent location, but just farther away from the freeway and bike trail. They are very nice and have 3 big well maintained pools, a fitness center, and even a yoga/aerobics room (they are like "resort/luxury style living" haha which made me feel a little strange living there but it's not that it wasn't pleasant!). They also have washer and dryer in the unit! However, they have carpet. This really shouldn't be as big a problem as it is. In fact with hard wood floors I have even gotten a little frustrated/annoyed hearing hazel's nails click all over the place, and as I said I have yet to use the floors for yoga (except for just one time), so why am I so attached? (Also my mom's boyfriend says we could easily create like a pseudo hard wood space big enough for yoga.) I created that attachment as establishing the ideal so many months ago. I do enjoy them and I was gearing up to start my home yoga practice again, so again it is like another lost opportunity of finally making this apartment work for me and now to just up and leave feels like taking something away right after I have finally just grasped it, having to start over. But this is self limitation.
Written this evening:
It is now later and I have spoken with my apartment manager also with my mom and her boyfriend. My mom suggested I not try to seek him out until they got there, but to just wait and see if he would follow through and otherwise have my day and we would talk once they arrived. He did not contact me all day even though he said he would finish the job this morning. However I trapped myself within the thought that I did not want to not be here if he were to finally show up / be ready to complete the job, so with this I held myself captive in my own apartment allowing all of my reactions to fester however consciously or subconsciously. I wrote this morning as you saw but by the time this late afternoon came I was still very reactive.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sit around all day and wait to see if my apartment manager would contact me and follow through and to participate in back chat that of course he will not, he is irresponsible and childish, and now I am wasting a whole day by sitting around waiting for him, refusing to leave and go do things I want to do because I do not want to not be here if he decides to show.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see that I am wasting time and to basically act like a victim within this, pretending that it is not my choice to waste this time but that I am being held captive to my irresponsible apartment manger's whims about when he might decide to actually do his job.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be bitter and resentful even within the self forgiveness that I am writing.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to fester in my reactions, emotions, and back chats all day such that when my mom and her boyfriend finally showed up I was very riled up with the realization that okay, it's go time, time to actually do this, let's go find him and talk to him.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be riled up and to use this as an excuse to send my mom and her boyfriend in front of me, asking that they lead the way because I am too riled up, only to then poke my head around my mom to interject my angry accusations or arguments in reaction to what my apartment manager is saying.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to assume that he had been laughing about me with another neighbor and not with a personal friend of his as he has now claimed, so that I became even more upset and irate that there was a breach in privacy / confidentiality and included another person in this conflict in my mind as a target of my anger without first knowing the truth of who he had meant to send that text message to.
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see and realize and try to understand his side, where even though I have been very sympathetic I have also been very reactive and self interested, so that I ignored the possibility that he might really be under pressure, he might fear unemployment, he might have some other reason within his own memories and his own mind to believe that I am threatening his employment -- thus explaining his interpretation of me and my communication and thus shedding light on who he is and why he is the way he is, so that I do not simply go into judgment and assumption about him and how he is "just irresponsible" and other reactive judgments.
After it was said and done my mom's boyfriend pointed out how it was like a family squabble, not a business transaction. I agree. I felt annoyed that he didn't decide to speak up and change the direction of the conversation, but moreso upset with myself for engaging in this personal battle rather than a professional one, once again blurring these lines between personal/professional, also feeling embarrassed for having been reactive and like "getting on his level" by participating in the dynamic.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become reactive and upset and personally invested in the outcome of the words that are spoken such that I want to speak points that will let me "win" in the argument and that will force him to see my side and to admit he is wrong. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to enter into like a family style squabble, straying away from the professional business matters at hand in terms of an exchange of money for services, where I am his customer and he is expected to provide certain services to me as a tenant.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget about certain points that I would have liked to bring up like for example why there are no work orders to keep track of who has requested maintenance first and to write out contracts basically for work that must be done so as to have a common understanding of expectations and what happens if those expectations are not met.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become invested in and try to direct my apartment manager's relationship with his supervisors, which he clearly does not navigate well, rather than focusing on my relationship with my apartment manager, in which I am participating in having very poor navigation as well.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I must maintain this position as on the other side of the buffer that is my apartment manager where, because of the sympathy that I feel toward him and his situation, I do not want to go above him to talk to his boss to complain about the lack of quality services I am receiving as compared to what is contained in my rental contract.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sit around all day basically punishing myself with my own emotions and reactions and thoughts and back chat, so that my apartment manager is not affected by any of this nor expected to actually face the problem, but instead I am just forcing myself to exist within and as all of this negative energy, punishing and abusing myself all day and also not accomplishing the things I would like to have accomplished, all the while blaming my apartment manager for this and also setting myself up to regret the way that I used my time today so that tomorrow I might blame him as well.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to now not want to deal with this or see or speak to my apartment manager again because I have become so frustrated and reactive and I feel like almost traumatized, by which I simply mean that my typical reaction to conflict is to treat it as if it is traumatic and thus to retreat / evade / not face myself as who I have been in the conflict, as how I have accepted and allowed it to affect me, but continue on in belief that it is like this force that has come in and affected me against my will.
I forgive myself thus for not accepting or allowing myself to be forgiving of myself or others within conflict, but always allowing conflict to be like the beginning of the end of any relationship because I am so afraid of facing conflict / facing myself / facing another within conflict. Must continue more with conflict, although I'm sure there will be ample opportunity.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, within the realization that it was more like a family squabble than a business conversation, reflect on conflict with my dad and what this means, as if it means something big and ominous, like this guy represents my dad or something, and also I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel embarrassed at my reactivity and to fear that this means that others can get me or see my weakness, when actually that kind of is what it means, because here I am showing others how they can use me to sabotage myself, if they can simply push the right buttons I will self destruct.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to self destruct, to be my own worst enemy, rather than supporting myself unconditionally, standing absolute in self honest self responsibility and stability.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create now a new negative relationship with my lived environment which has also reverted some of the work I did in recent days in regards to my relationship with my home environment where now I am still looking around and seeing it as dark and gloomy and depressing, because that is how I feel, and so I am looking around and blaming the physical space for this reaction. So here I commit myself to re-read what I had written previously, to sound my self forgiveness on this issue, and to re-commit myself to the commitments I made there in regards to supporting myself and taking responsibility for myself in my home environment.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to feel like my whole week before my new job is ruined, and like once I start my new job it's like my life is over, and this is all the free time I will ever have, and I can't control any of it the way I want to so it's just like a big disaster and the world is over.
Here I commit myself to walking out of my mind into the physical as my breath as what is here with me in the physical, which is actually pretty fucking great -- I am very lucky. I commit myself also to support myself in preparation for my job and accomplishing what needs to be accomplished before then.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to prove a point and have another person feel the pain of the consequences of their actions such that I would rather be mean and reactive, believing this to be effective, not realizing that reaction breeds reaction and this will only make the other person more defensive and more resolute in their position, and within this I forgive myself thus for accepting and allowing myself to be annoyed that my mom was too nice and that the conversation ended on too nice of terms because I was still riled up and I was still angry and I wanted everyone else to suffer the way I was making myself suffer.
So I AGAIN forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want others to suffer. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to suffer. I have accepted it and allowed it, indeed created it, and so therefore I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to WANT myself to suffer, where here I realize that what I want for others is what I want for myself, and vice versa. What the fuck's with that? This keeps coming up so I will have to address it.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe that if I make the DECISION, as in I CHOOSE, to move to a different apartment in response/reaction to this situation, that it is not of my own volition, that it is like something is being taken from me, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to once AGAIN victimize myself within my own decisions, blaming external forces for the ways that I limit/move/direct myself, creating myself as like a hostage to things I believe I cannot control when in fact they are manufactured and manifested by me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to imprison myself within my mind in my reactions, manifesting this imprisonment onto my physical body as believing that my external reality as the choices I make for my self direction is inflicted upon me against my will. This is NOT SELF SUPPORT, and it is NOT SELF HONEST. It is NOT SELF RESPONSIBLE.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to the ways that my apartment manager flip flopped and said words to suit whatever he was trying to convince us of, so that he contradicted himself within his own arguments in order to evade responsibility, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto this like look at all he did wrong, as if this then makes it excusable for me to behave in ways that are irresponsible within my anger and reactivity, and also to distract myself from moving forward and taking care of myself / supporting myself and taking responsibility for myself but instead to just hold on to these words that I heard spoken by him and thinking about how wrong he is and how he's this and that rather than looking at myself and seeing what I can do, how I can support myself, how I can take responsibility for myself, how I can resolve this situation for myself without relying or depending on anyone outside myself. Because I can. I absolutely can.
So here I commit myself to stop, and breathe. Stop, and breathe. Stop myself as my reactions, thoughts, judgments, projections, and allow myself to walk through the emotions to clear them. Breathe. I commit myself to giving myself self care, to taking care also of the responsibilities which are in front of me which I can address, to not allowing this little road bump to become like a road block, to keep myself moving forward as my own self directive principle, and to continue to write out these reactions in consideration of this development as this relationship with my apartment manager as well as my lived environment. I commit myself to patience within this process to reject any sense of urgency I may develop because I see that the moment I allow a sense of urgency is the moment I allow myself to become in opposition to physical reality, because I cannot change things in an instant -- it doesn't work like that.
I commit myself to, within my breathing practice, realize that I direct myself, I create my experiences. I commit myself thus to realize and understand that I make choices for myself and so I am responsible for those choices. I commit myself thus to make self-supportive self-responsible self-honest choices, not allowing myself to blame others for my circumstances or for my reactions to my circumstances but to realize that I direct myself and thus create my experiences.
I commit myself also to re-reading what I wrote about grudges because I see that I am developing like an absolute negative energy against my apartment manager where I want to blame him for all of my reactions and what has come to pass within this project and I want to just stay sooo mad at him so that I can justify my anger and justify any little reason to become more upset because look at this awful thing that happened that he did!!! I realize this is incredibly immature and irresponsible. I realize that within this I am maintaining that lack of discrepancy between what is personal versus professional. So I commit myself to coming back to myself in my breath and also to turning the points back on myself as an opportunity to see myself: Why am I reacting like this? What memories are coming up? What beliefs? Judgments?
I commit myself to self care and gentleness with myself in my emotionally sensitive state. I commit myself to consideration of what else is coming here in this conflict as memories of conflict with my dad. I commit myself to staying here with myself and understanding that when I want to cry in another's arms and have another comfort me -- I can do this for myself. So I commit myself to holding myself and comforting myself and telling myself, thus trusting myself, that everything really will be okay, everything already is okay, this is really not even a big deal except that I have made it a big deal, and another person not taking responsibility for themselves is not an excuse for me to not take responsibility for myself. I commit myself to take responsibility for myself in all dimensions of this situation such as self care, self forgiveness, self responsibility within this situation as well as within the points that come up, communication and interaction, rejection of thoughts and emotions that lead to the generation of a grudge, rejection of thoughts and emotions that lead to spite and vindication; I commit myself thus to stability in and as my breath with myself in my human physical body.
I am my home just as all of existence is my home, the home of all, one and equal. So I also commit myself thus to oneness and equality within an understanding of what is best for all, rejecting my ego as my desire to be right or win an argument or make another person suffer or make myself suffer.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to remain on the surface of all of these points above within my writing today such that I was still writing within reaction and based in large part on assumptions/judgments/beliefs/projections, so that whatever conclusions I thought I found were only enforcing my reactive state rather than finding and coming into my breath as finding a solution that is best for all within absolute self responsibility and stability.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become frustrated and irritated during my drive home yesterday when I hit a lot of traffic and also when the pet store I tried to go to right before coming home ended up being closed so that when I arrived home and saw what was to be faced there with my apartment manager and the mess, I was already in an emotional state of stress and irritation so that I was primed and ready to go straight to reaction in this situation.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe/project that my brother or mom's boyfriend would be too reactive and thus ineffectual, when in reality this is how I was, and I also forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to overlook the value in being calm and kind where this can actually be more effective in reaching common understanding in conflict.
I commit myself to continuing to write on this conflict and my reactions if necessary and continuing to see my responsibility within all that has come to pass. This really really really did not need to blow up so big. So I commit myself to seeing how I detonated this bomb.
This is pretty cool Kaitlee. Unraveling these layers of reactions appears to be changing how you interact with the world. Do you notice changes?
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