Tell people what I really think

I’m doing this enough to call it done.

In my dream last night (which I don’t remember enough of to even give a rough plot), I was having a tense, serious conversation with someone when my ex walks up and tries to join in. I looked at him, said, “Excuse me, do I know you? This is a private conversation. Please let us finish,” and stared at him until he walked away.

Man, that felt good.

I’m rereading the Something Positive archives and ran across this quote: “If I could say half the things I wanted, I’d either be happy or hanging from a tree branch. Either way, the temptation is unbearable.”

How true, how true…Actually, I am doing really well at this with the ex I’m friends with. Probably because he’s never spared a thought for my feelings when he speaks, but that level of honesty is sometimes a good thing. Things got really awkward a few weeks ago when he confessed that he always figured we’d just say to heck with it and get married. I told him that he killed any chance of that happening with the way he treated me after we broke up. He feels bad about it now. I’ve forgiven him, but I’d be an idiot if I walked face-first into that mistake again.

But now he’s in a rough spot. He’s separated from his girlfriend, but stuck living with her because of their lease. And even if he gets out of the lease, he has nowhere to go—he’d have to save up money first. I’ve offered him my living room floor (he has an air mattress), but he’s using that as a last resort. He’s got a friend that’s offered him a room; if it doesn’t work out, he’ll probably be here by the end of the month.

He told me that the reason he’s hesitant about moving in with me is because he doesn’t want to mooch off me. To be honest, I’m hesitant to take in a roommate…him especially. But I can’t just stand by and let him suffer like this—his home situation is really bad right now. I told him that, for all the rotten things he’s done to me, he’s also one of the few that’s been there when I needed it. And he really has. I’d like to repay the favor. You don’t run across friends like that often.

Of course, what I haven’t told him yet is that I do expect him to pay some sort of rent…maybe $100 a month or so, plus whatever it takes to feed him. I figure we can cross that bridge when we come to it. ::grins::

Today I got put in a really awkward situation at work. There’s a seminar that apparently my bosses have known about for months, and one (my manager) thought the other (our director) was going to talk to me and a coworker about. But he didn’t, so I just found out about it yesterday. (The coworker knew about it, and wanted to go, but I have seniority.) Well, today it was suddenly decided that one of us should go, but being last minute, that wasn’t easy to pull off. Strings were pulled, comp flights collected…and then my coworker told our director something that made him not want her to go. But he’s already created all this fuss and gotten his boss involved, so he turns to me.

I do not want to go. I hate traveling anyway (for business, at least), and all but two sessions of this seminar have absolutely no bearing on my job. My coworker-hell, even my manager-would get way more out of it than me. Plus, it’s next week. Yeah, I may not have kids or cats or anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have obligations. So I tried to explain logically why my coworker was a better choice. Or my manager—actually, he’s the best choice, but our director flat out doesn’t want him to go. (Won’t even go there…it’s too stupid.) Finally I told him I had a prior obligation, and he let it drop. But I know he’s probably ticked at me.

That’s not what I’m mad about, though. What annoys me is that this was his screw-up, not mine…he’s the one who forgot to mention it to me. And the only reason he was pushing me so hard to go is because he didn’t want to lose face with his boss for pulling out all the stops to get her to approve expenses for a trip that no one’s going on. He could have saved himself a lot of trouble by asking me if I wanted to go before he went and got the approval, but of course he didn’t. And you know what? That is so not my problem.

Telling him I have a prior obligation is a cop-out, and I know it. I wish I’d just said “no.” I’m tired of covering his ass, and I’m sick to death of candy-coating my thoughts.

I felt really bad about the email I sent. It was to my ex (in case anyone’s keeping track, the most recent one), telling him in no uncertain terms how I feel about him and what he did to me. I kept running Helen Hunt’s lines from As Good as It Gets through my head: It was a really bad thing to say. It made me sick at my stomach.

But you know what? I think it helped. Yesterday my favorite Internet radio station went down, leaving me at the mercy of my iTunes. In there was a CD he had burned for me, one that I had listened to every day until, well. So I listened to it. And it didn’t hurt anymore. Not even Josh Radin’s “Winter” (an absolutely gorgeous song…go listen to it now), which has always unravelled me.

I still hate him for what he did to me. I probably always will, to some degree. But I don’t love him anymore. I’m finally free.

Of course, I then promptly turned around and got myself into a sticky situation with someone very close to me…got on too much of a roll spilling my guts, as it were, and confessed something I probably shouldn’t have. I’d go into detail, but I can’t bring myself to just yet. And that’s enough on that for now. :)

I sent the email.

And now that I’ve napalmed that bridge, I work on moving on.

On the one hand, I’ve been doing this more and getting really positive results. Yay me. On the other hand, there’s an email that I really, really, really want to send, that I feel fits this goal, yet I don’t think I should send it. It would make me feel so much better to have my say, since he got his…but then I think I should just let it go.

Let him go.

Anyway. There appears to be a fine line between saying what you think and unleashing all your evil thoughts on someone—even though he truly does deserve it!

But I’ve found that when I’m crabby (like today…I don’t feel good, and today would have been stressful under the best conditions), I’m really, really honest. Oddly enough, nobody seemed to mind.

Mostly I just need to learn to say no. Which is incredibly hard for me. But I’m trying!

I’m also done making excuses for myself. People will either accept me for who I am…or they won’t. I’m through changing to please others.