Yesterday I felt really stressed, angry, and resentful.
I was bursting with it while our neighbors were, I feel, demonstrating (AGAIN) their complete selfish lack of consideration for neighbors when they totally (I think) have a choice not to, unsafely turning our residential corner into their noisy high-traffic business parking lot. I had a couple of loud confrontations (not NEARLY as many as I felt pressed to, though) that resulted in unpleasant things like some stupid cunt flipping me off.
It’s hard for me to even restrain myself from going off just to try to write a short summary of this. I am SEETHING.
Anyway, I did one of the right things and went for a therapeutic walk. Partly to burn off steam, and partly because I love taking walks and need the exercise, but also partly to research / gather evidence / document their trespasses by locating their signs and such. Should I tally up how much data I have used capturing photos and videos of people being stupid and noisy and just, like, PARKING, in ways that are illegal, inconsiderate, or just plain … IDK … offensive to me? LOL. I hoard “evidence” and “documentation” of other people’s trespasses. The sad thing is I don’t enjoy looking at it later; often I just feel ashamed because it reminds me of freaking out in public and demonstrating to everyone how crazy I am (but I’m NOT crazy! These are legitimate things to be angry about … aren’t they? Why doesn’t anyone/everyone understand?).
At the tail end of my walk I had to go by one of those little free libraries. I’ve made some progress since I started this site (and even before, and with my “destination reading” project and visions*) in restraining myself from compulsively grabbing books from these little stashes and taking them home, but yesterday I wanted to grab all of them and take them home and I didn’t want to stop myself or consider it more carefully. It was exactly like seeing a pill or a drink and TAKING IT, swallowing it, without allowing myself to reflect and deprive myself of the relief.
I’m having a hard time. I continue to have a hard time. Maybe I should forgive myself and chalk it up to cognitive dissonance: that I’m learning and growing a lot, actually, and it’s natural to have these slips of wanting to drag yourself back down into the self you feel safe as. But IDK. As I write that I just FEEL the not-safeness. The feeling of being shit on and not being able to make it stop.
I think I need to review what I learned about CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy); some of the essential tools and insights are eluding me at the moment. But I think I’m at least partially on the right track journaling about it and trying to reflect on it. I’m so mad I don’t want to let it go, though, which is definitely holding me back from experiencing relief. I’ve been putting way too much energy in living in the anger and the fear that this will never fucking end, these people shitting on us (me, apparently, since my wife doesn’t care and neither, apparently, do the deaf people living around us). I think I’m supposed to put this energy into more productive stuff: like put on my headphones and review CBT stuff, for example, or I could have followed through sooner on a 101 sources of income if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em scheme to capitalize on the (unwanted, but valuable) traffic being delivered right into our driveway.
I just realized maybe I am also experiencing some distress and feelings of loss and insecurity due to the Seattle Public Library’s “cybersecurity event” that has made checking out ebooks impossible for the last four or five days WEEK. It could be making me want to stockpile books because OMG look how this can happen! You can lose access!
Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, this probably contributed a lot to my being “triggered”. I had plans to finish a book that got returned before I was (almost) done, and discovered I couldn’t renew it when I was counting on that little treat and accomplishment. And then … the unexpected noisy neighbor trespass.
With the SPL problem, I know that it is out of my control, and it is not personal. But with the neighbors and the swarms of stupid shitholes they summoned to our street I feel like I should *do* something about it, and that it IS personal. It feels very personal. I feel like I should have more control here at home where I live. It’s very upsetting to not be able to control who has access to our driveway and my eardrums, inside my brain. Car doors slamming slamming slamming. The unpredictability. Not being able to count on peace or quiet or privacy EVER. Not being able to count on neighbors to care about you or demonstrate even a modicum of consideration.
So I know I need to focus on what I *can* control. And man … I guess being able to grab stacks of free books is a start, albeit a hoardery one.
*follow up here with a post about “destination reading” as it relates to hoarding books, etc.