Category Archives: Rants

But you can’t make it drink. Just like you can’t make a person do something. And you can’t open their eyes to the truth of they don’t want to see it. And a million other related cliches.

It’s been a while since I posted anything really personal in here. For a while, I guess I was worried that I might say something about someone I know in the real world ™ and they’re be angry. I also worried that I might say something which someone would use as ammunition against Ryan and/or myself. So I stopped talking even when it might have done me well to speak. In the process, my blog lost its cathartic tendencies and I posted a whole lot less but, truthfully, I miss it. And, truthfully, sometimes there are things you need to get out but the person who needs to hear them isn’t ready or willing or even able to listen. But my blog will.

We fight, like any normal couple. We’re not one of those couples you see on TV who have never had a fight or who freak out because they just had their first fight. No, we fight. Not as much anymore, thank God. It was bad for a while. Sometimes it felt like our relationship was only made of the fighting and the good times were abnormal. There was a lot of other shit going on which affected it so maybe, this time last year or the year before, the fighting was necessary. Maybe we’ve moved to a point where we need to fight less. I hope so. But we still fight.

The fact that we fight is not the problem. I think, when it’s all said and done, we generally understand eachother or can at least agree to disagree. I believe neither of us intentionally wants to hurt the other but we are both sensitive in our own ways, sometimes oversensitive.

The problem is the way we fight. It’s the same every time. We go about discussing the issues in the wrong way and, before you know it, we’re fighting just to fight. We’re fighting about the fight. Except, I think that sometimes I’m the only one who knows it. There are certain triggers and in my mind I think “Oh shit. This is going to set us back 3 months” and then I try everything in my power to avoid the fight which becomes increasingly difficult as I find myself frustrated at the fact that we have let this happen again. That we have not changed.

That he has not changed. I feel guilty typing that because I know I am not perfect. I know I contributed to last night’s fight. I know I am not selfless. If I were, I’d glad want children. I wouldn’t care about school for myself or what kind of job I work. I wouldn’t tell Ryan I want him out of the military or that I don’t like his family. I would grin and bare it and maybe earn myself some just rewards in the afterlife.

No, I am not selfless but I do think I am more selfless than he is when we fight. Except, he doesn’t see it. He can’t see it. It’s like he has some sort of filter that interprets everything I do as selfish no matter how contradictory that may be to the truth. If I tell him to calm down because I know it does no one any good for him to be so upset, he thinks I am defending whatever offense I have committed, rather than trying to keep the fight in check. If I try to explain this, he thinks I am just saying “I am always right and you are wrong.” But how can I say that is not what I am saying? Wouldn’t that just enforce his mindset that I am implying that? I’m not saying you’re wrong or that I’m right. I’m saying what we are doing, what you are doing is hurtful to us? It’s not my pride I’m worried about. I don’t care about saving face, I care about us!

So you see my dilemma. I cannot explain to him that maybe he isn’t seeing things clearly without damaging my platform, without “proving” to him that he is right and I am just being stubborn, stupid or selfish. But I’m not.

Faced with a lose-lose situation, I took the easier route. And by “easier,” I mean that I gave up on trying to explain to him and I told him it didn’t matter despite the fact that it does matter. We have this gigantic issue that he can’t even understand and I cannot possibly explain but I know that it could easily make or break us. The nature of the beast makes it seemingly impossible to tame but fighting like this cannot go unchecked. Because even if the subject of the fight can be resolved, resolution can only come if we can work together and we can’t as long as he sees things this way.

I choked back tears because I don’t know how I can show him the way I see things, how detrimental his thought process and behaviours can be to us. And instead of talking to him, which I knew would do no good, I told him good bye which did us no good anyway. What choice do I have?

It was a shitty answer, I know. Fighting is a stupid waste of time even in the best conditions. It’s even stupider when you fight like we do. It’s absolutely ridiculous when you are separated by thousands of miles of ocean and several time zones. And even as we fight I cannot help but think of how we are squandering time. His internet might decide to act up any minute, as we in the middle of our fight. Or even worse. We shouldn’t be fighting when there is a possibility that he might not even come home.

If I am selfish in any way it is because I do not want to fight. I want to spend every possible moment I can loving him and being loved in return. That is what I fight for.

The funny thing about this all – and I use a very loose definition of funny – is that I understood where he was coming from one he stopped being defensive enough to explain it. And I felt bad. I was sorry. Except he can’t see that I wasn’t fighting with him about how he felt, rather how he went about telling me.

He says I don’t listen but does he realize how hard he makes it? There’s nothing to even listen to when he’s so busy being defensive and brooding and angry and, dare I say, selfish. He thinks I don’t listen but the truth is, sometimes he’s not even saying anything. He jumps to the point where he accuses me of not listening right away, without giving me the chance to listen. Had he told me right away how he felt, I would have been happy to recognize it. Instead, he immediately lets himself get angry and the first I head of how he feels comes as a shock. I’m blown away and if I don’t react maturely, it’s no wonder.

I’m so busy trying to hold everything together and he mistakes the fight in me as fighting him, instead of fighting for us. In return, he fights me. And it’s tiring. I know it won’t be any better if I stop fighting for us but I also know it can’t possibly get any better unless he stops fighting me over false perceptions. In the meantime, I’m surrounded by a rock and a hard place. I know, enough with the cliches already. But they’re so suiting.

So I lied. It does matter and it is important but I don’t know how to get through to him. He’ll read this and I want to hope that he’ll “see the light” but I know he won’t. Maybe we’ll talk about it. It’ll probably turn into a fight and I’ll lie, again, to end it. I guess I’ll just keep lying because it’s the easier difficult choice to make. In doing that, what cliche am I fulfilling?

If Phantom would shut the fuck up. Besides getting a muzzle of breaking his skull, what can I do to make this cat be quiet?

Cut it the fuck out. Or I’ll cut you.

Sincerely,

Me

and waiting and waiting is what I was doing all weekend. Ryan told me he bought me flowers but did I see them on Valentine’s Day? No. Did I assume he was lying? Nah.

In fact, the flowers never wound up on my doorstep. Indeed, they were delivered to the office, instead. What’s more, is that there was no note left on my door that this is where my flowers were. So after waiting 2 days, I called the office on a whim to inquire about the status of my flowers. Lo and behold! They were in the office waiting for me the whole time. Except, how would I have known that if the delivery person did not leave a note?!

I wasn’t sure how to remedy this situation but it did make me feel better to send this letter to the flower service:

Hello,

My husband recently used your website to purchase flowers which were supposed to be delivered to me on Valentine’s Day. Saturday came and went with no delivery; I was out of the house for only 30 minutes and there was no note left on my door if the delivery person had come.

I live in an apartment complex with an office which accepts deliveries if tenants are not available. Although no note was left to indicate that this was the situation, I called the office on Monday afternoon when no flowers had arrived. My flowers had, indeed, been delivered to the office with no communication to me that this was the case.

I am now in possession of my flowers but am sorely disappointed in my delivery experience. Had a delivery person knocked and found I was out of the house, he or she should have left a note indicating the flowers were sent to the office. However, it is my believe that the delivery person did not even come to my door at all and, instead, simply dropped the flowers at the office because our leasing agent said this person stopped there first. She informed the person to check if I was home and leave a note, if not, before leaving them at the office. Obviously, even with these instructions, this did not happen.

I have used many delivery services and there is no service of which I know who would think it is acceptable to deliver my goods to the office without alerting me or ,as I suspect to be the case, even trying my door. Although I recognize Valentine’s Day must be one of the busier days of the year for you, if not the busiest, this is simply shoddy business practice and I find it appalling that you could treat your customers in such a manner.

My husband is currently deployed to a war zone and went out of his way to order me flowers. I waited, literally, all day for my flowers to arrive and when they did not it’s safe to say I was extremely disappointed. Having to let him know that my flowers had not arrived was no more rewarding itself. Had I not taken the initiative to call the office, who knows how long my flowers might have sat, unbeknown to me, wilting away.

I hope that you are more accommodating in the future when it comes to doing the job customers like my husband pay you to do. I certainly hope others did not have their special day ruined because of such poor service. I did not expect your deliverer to go out of his or her way but simply to deliver my flowers to my door in a timely manner or, if the situation calls for it, let me know the flowers are in the office by leaving a note. With customer service like this, I wonder how you can claim you have a “100% satisfaction guarantee.” I certainly do not feel satisfied that I had to wait this long to receive my flowers which were not delivered to me in the first place. Now I will not be able to enjoy them as fully as I would have been able to, had they been delivered on February 14th.

Nicole

Yesterday seemed like a good day. We headed to a shopping center and hit up Pier 1, Lowe’s, Linens and Things and Barnes and Noble. We finally purchased a mirror I had been wanting for the living room and happened to find a modular shelving set at linens and things which was on sale because they’re going out of business. We both added some books to our collections and we finally got brackets to help us hang our mantel shelf, which I did around 3:45 this morning. LOL It actually turned out really nice.

On the other hand, the modular shelving did not work nearly as well as I would have liked and I wound up putting a half dozen useless holes in the wall because the holes in the shelves are so small and particular. Even using the paper templates which came with it resulted in problems and I wound up wasting half of the anchors which came with. Not to mention that trying to get the shelves on the damn wall made a bunch of black marks (because the shelves are black). I finally “finished” even though the shelves are not flush to the wall, level with eachother and possible not even usable. I just decided to give up. Ugh.