That’s why I pick and choose, I don’t get ish confused.

That’s Why I Pick and Choose; I Don’t get Ish Confused…

            I met a girl a few years ago at a convenience store, and we became fast friends. Usually I am a pretty good judge of character and I don’t hang out or associate with people that can potentially get me into trouble. I am not a prude by any means, but I don’t like to be around people that party to much, do drugs, and do immoral things. I am not perfect, I smoke my cigarettes and my weed, but I have perfect attendance at my job, always help people out, and am generally a good person. This girl got me into a different type of trouble, and that trouble was a boatload of stress. It’s a shame, because when I was with her we did have a good time. There were times when she had me laughing so hard that my stomach hurt, but there were other times that she had me so angry that I wanted to strangle her. I think the whole thing is my fault because I never let her know she made me angry or did things that I didn’t like.

            Why did I put up with it? To this day, I am still not sure. Here are the reasons why she turned out to be a bad friend. First of all she is an extremely needy person, and it was definitely overbearing .Until she got a car, she expected me to give her rides all over the place, and never offered me money for gas, or even a thank you. Over the course of her friendship I had “lent” her so much money that I just lost track. Never once got paid back. There maybe have been a handful of times during the friendship that she offered to pay for dinner, coffee, whatever. That’s another thing that just seemed to be expected of me, and like a fool I fell for it over and over again. I used to drop what I was doing to run to her attention. It was always what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it.  If she would call me in the middle of the night and I didn’t answer, she would call and call until I finally picked up. Every single time it was someth8ing that could have waited until the morning. Like I know it is exciting that your sister in law went into labor, but being that it is not a quick process, you could have told me in the morning. And when I would ask she had the nerve to get mad at me. I helped her pack and unpack her house multiple times, watched her dog, cleaned, helped her study, and helped her search for jobs. Pretty much anything someone can use you for, I was a target.

            She is a very selfish person, and does not even realize it. Her, her, her is all I ever heard. And, when she had girlfriends, she would put me on the backburner, and only call or text to tell me things that had happened to her and ask me advice on whatever was going on. Every time I gave her advice, I knew I was r8ight, and she knew it too but she refused to listen. Why ask for advice if you are not even going to bother to listen? Every time she got dumped, of course she came crying to me, and I was always there to have her back and comfort her, and I was number one again. It was rare if she ever asked anything that was going on in my life.  And if she did, she was very uncaring about it. Now, even though I didn’t care about everything all the time, I still at least acted like I cared. I am not a person that looks for or expects anything, I never was. But aren’t friendships give and take? Not just take take take.

            After losing her job things kind of went more downhill then they already were. Her landlord decided that her house was to much to keep up with, so he decided to sell the house. Now, her two roommates weren’t thrilled ahbout having to move but they did what they had to do and found places to go. I agree that the landlord didn’t give them much time to get out, but they didn’t have a ooroblem finding a spot. Now my friend on the other hand never found a spot so she ended up staying in her car beauwe none of her family member would take her in, even for a little bit. I don’t blame them, she was the same way with her family that she was with me. Unfortunalty she still didn’t get it. She always thought they were I nthe wrong when in fact it was always her. One example was when her aunt had invited her to thanksgiving dinner a long time in advance, and when it caqme time her girlfriend asked her like a day before and she ditched her family to go to the girlfriends house. I would have been dissapoointed to. And her living situation, she even asked to move in with me, but my parents said absolkutely not, and I don’t blame them either.

            I really was stressed out the whole friendship becauwe I always felt extremely used and one sided but like I said in the beginning, it was my fault because I nevber opened my mouth. Anytime I would try, she would just change the subject and once again going on the tangent about herself . When she finally moved away, I didn’t know where she went, what she was doing, anything.  We would keep in touch via text messaging once in a while, but to be honest, my stress level went down tenfold. I still had the stress from family and job, but it was nothing like what she put me through. I still can’t believe she thinks she was right all the time.

            Now, this girl had been a lesbian since she knew what lesbians were, and that didn’t bother me at all. I have dabbled with women myself. A couple weeks ago though, she called me and told me that she now has a boyfriend. Of course I was shocked. And of course it is not a nice person. This man is nearly 40, has 8 kids, and doesn’t do anything with his life. Now my friend has lost over a 100 pounds and she was happy with him, but I had a hard time understanding how that could happen. Yesterday she called me and asked where I was at because she was in the area. It wasn’t even hey tiff how you doing, what’s new? It was me and guy is taking a break, look at my weight loss, etc. I let her come over here and she stayed less then 20 mjinutes. The whole time she was here she talked about herself, and I was really annoyed. She kept asking if I had anything to eat, any soda, snacks, and I really didn’t have anything here. I had 3 mini pieces of pizza that my dad had given me for dinner ,and she decided to help herself before she walked out the door. She kept texting this dude and calling him and it was a really unenjoyable experience. So just this once I did open my mouth. I said to her “You haven’t seen me in almost 2 years, and all you can do is talk about yourself and this dude” and she just laughed and told me to shut up. I think that was the final straw and when I have enough guts, which I think I am just going to have to do, it to tell her in a nice way everything that is going on. She really needs to focus on getting her shit together and not relyhing so much on other people. She needs to get herself as job, save money and find her own place to live, and just act like a normal 26 year old person. Two more last thoughts. I know that if this dude dumps her she will call me right away and expect me to do something about it. And the second thing is that if I do decide to tell her everything, I know she will think I am wrong, so I have to figure out how to deal with that right away. I guess as long as I know that I am right, it shouldn’t matter .but there is always that part of me that is ephemerally guilty even when there is no need to be.

One day without stress would be nice.

If you know me, you know that I am a very anxious person. Although I can’t help the way I am, it really does affect the way my life is. Even when I have nothing stressful coming up, or its a vacation or a day off, I still always feel a sense of pressure coming at me from all different directions. And even when I am not at work, I tend to not be able to leave work related issues and their backdoor and they follow me home. I never feel at ease and it is bothersome. For a short period of time I was doing a little bit better stress wise because we had a little extra help at work, but now that that is over, I am right back to be stressed out. Next time I take a few days off, I plan on really trying to relax and block everything out, even just for a couple of days.

My latest stress is this problem I have been having with my arm for almost the past year. My arm had been bothering me for a while, but recently it has gotten worse. I am one of those people who continue to put health related things on the back burner but this is one thing I could no longer put off. Had it been my left arm I probably would have still been putting off going to the doctor, but considering I am right-handed and do a lot of writing at work and at home, I kind of need the use of my arm. Problem with my arm is that it feels as though I have a tourniquet tied around my arm. That is the best way I can describe it. Sometimes I get pins and needles in my hand and fingers and other times my whole arm is numb. At times I also get numbness and tingling in the lower half of my face. It is very bizarre. Three annoying doctors visits later I am a little closer to a diagnosis but nobody can tell me anything conclusive.

I have had x-rays, emg’s, ekgs, bone tests, muscle tests, and the only thing the doctor told me was that I have to go to intense physical therapy three times a week for the next three months, and hopefully that will help this discomfort go away. He also told me that it won’t be a permanent fix but it should definitely help. I am bummed that there is no permanent fix for this problem, and I am bummed that I have to go to therapy. It;’s not so much the therapy I am not thrilled about, it is the money. Money is an issue I am having right now, but I’ll get into that in another blog later down the line. At 50 bucks a pop 2-3 times a week its going to become very expensive. By the time I have finished the therapy, it will have cost me about 1800 dollars. I would gladly shell it out if I could be sure that this would be done and over with, but I am skeptical. Anyway I am going to try not to be so stressed out about my arm only because people are understanding. They know I am a hard worker, and that if I need to take a break or just take it a little easy for a while then they are okay with that.

 

On a kind of off subject note, here is how my Monday morning went. Had to wake up and get ready to get that stupid EMG done. Even though I took one of my pills this morning I was still really nervous and I thought I was just going to cancel that appointment, but I decided to just be a big girl about it haha The test wasnt horrible but then again it wasnt terribly pleasant. At first he was just using different kind of wavelengths or whatever with this little metal thingie to shock and stimulate my muscles and the shocks felt funny but it wasnt that bad. I knew the test also involved needles, but I wasnt prepared for this type. A longish needle that has to anchor itself in the muscle so it can get a good reading. That part of the needle isn’t so bad because it is just chilling there. All in all the worst part of the test was when he asked my to lift my arm up as he pressed the needles as deep as he could into my arm. It didn’t hurt is was severely unpleasant. Then the doctor took some x-rays of my neck because he wanted to make sure I didnt have an extra rib or something. Anyway this is when the doctor came back out and told me about the physical therapy. I was exhausted after taking that xanax so I stopped and got coffee to try to wake me up then I headed to work. No sooner did I get in the building, I get the usual bombardment of nonsense from staff and residents, and finally made it back to the office. I didn’t even have my coat off yet and my boss is giving me all this paperwork and piles of things to do. I usually don’t mind because I love that she relies on me. I was still wound up though from my appointment and I was doped on my pills so I was having a hard time comprehending what she was saying. Even though I went to work late today, I still managed to get everything finished that she asked me to do. I was so proud of myself for that. We now have to do mostly everything on the computers now, so I put everything I had to in the computer, and still managed to get everything done with a few minutes to spare. I stayed an hour later to finish up, plus I have to make up the time anyway. I took one of my co-workers home and spent a little bit of time with her, and then I finally got home and took my bath and now going to relax for the rest of the evening. I haven’t had such a lousy Monday in a while, but let’s just hope that tomorrow brings good things.

Being nice really doesn’t get you that far…

I feel as though my parent’s have raised me to be an upstanding citizen. Of course I make mistakes like anyone else, but I try so hard to please everyone that I come in contact with . I am the type of person that says yes to anything people ask me to do, as long as it doesn’t harm me or anyone else, and even though I know that I can’t handle everything that people ask me, I do it anyway, and I get awfully frazzled. I stretch myself thin, but I just don’t want anyone to be mad at me or disappointed with me. Every time I say no, I have an immediate feeling of guilt, and I usually rescind and do whatever it is anyway.

I have definitely created “monsters” all around me. Now that people know I always say yes, I would say I have a nice little “fan club”. But in my heart, I know these people aren’t really my friends at all. It is as simple as it is. They need something, and good old Tiff will do it. I can’t even lie about it, sometimes I don;t even try to hide my annoyance towards these people. Even so, I still do it. And I kick myself. Many times the things people ask me to do aren’t really significant. Silly things like watching residents while they have to do other things (the thing they usually have to do is go putz around in the hallways), give people rides, lend money (even though I barely have two pennies to rub together), and the list could go on, but I think you guys get the gist.

I love helping people for the obvious reasons. I pride myself in the fact that people can rely and depend on me. That is something that I would certainly consider one of my best features. I’ve never really felt a sense of appreciation, except from my family. I also think that it is my fault. I’ve done so many things that it’s just automatic for people. I don’t get a please, thank you, anything. People actually seek me out from all over the place to see if I will do something for them. And the only thing that I would like in return is a “Thanks Tiff.” That’s it, honest.

Now this instance is not significant, but I am going to write about it anyway, just to give you guys an example of what I am talking about, and how people act. I had overtime at work, so I had to leave early today so that I would not be in trouble with the payroll office. One of the employees in my building asked me to cover the reception desk for an hour so that she could get her work done. I honestly didn’t mind because all my work was done for the day, and being at the desk gives me a little break from doing recreation stuff for a little while. The only thing I asked was to make sure she came back on time because I had to clock out to avoid overtime. I also had plans that I didn’t want to be late for. Of course I should have known that it wasn’t going to happen like that. Now 15 extra minutes might not seem like a big deal, but it was to me. It just goes to show that people really must think I am a doormat. I wasnt mad at her, just disappointed. A simple phone call letting me know she was going to be a little late would have made everything okay. I got no phone call, and I didn’t get relieved for another few minutes until I saw the night receptionist come in the building. I didn’t even know the other woman wasnt going to show back up. The sad part about it is the woman doesn;t even know that I am ticked off. Ugh, and then while I was sitting at the desk, one of the night shift CNA’s came up to the desk to order food, and she asked me to use the desk phone because she had no minutes on her cell phone. Usually no one other than the receptionist is supposed to use that phone, but I let her because I felt bad. Ordering food doesn’t take long so I didn’t mind. This girl was on the phone for so long, trying to order the food, and talking to her friends in the lobby, all while like 4 other phone lines were ringing. I kept telling her I needed to answer all these business calls, but she blatantly disregarded me. When she finally got off the phone, she put it down and didn’t even look at me and just walked away. Of course no thank you, sorry, anything. Like I said in the beginning, these things are definitely not a big deal, but I damn sure know that these people would not treat others the same way they treat me. I observe it all day. Not just at work, but everywhere. It all comes down to simple manners which I suppose many people are lacking these days.

I’ve certainly dug myself a nice hole. I recall saying no very few times, but those times I did, people treated me differently for a while. I really need to start re-evaluating myself and the things I extend myself to do. Although I do not want to change who I am I need to change how many things I allow myself to do. I want to continue to help people and be a nice person but I just do not want to be known as a pushover. All these little things add up to a lot.

I don’t want to be known as a rambler, so the last thing for this installment is the rare times when I actually ask for something, or ask for help. You should see the looks people give me. Simple stuff as asking for a band-aid, helping me push someone, asking a simple question. It’s always seems like such a chore. Thuis is why I try not to ask for help to often because I would not want to be a burden for anyone. This is also why I try to do everything myself and get myself all worked up. My supervisor even told me to slow down today and that I didn’t have to do everything. Coming from her, I tried to take the rest of the day easy. But since that aggravating phone situation happened I couldn’t really de-stress myself. Anyway, this is why people can find me frequently frazzled but soon I will be taking my vacation, and when I come back I am hoping for a fresh start. It will be a slow change, but it something that I need to do for my own sanity.

Virgin Blogger

     Although I read alot of blogs, I have never written one of my own. But recently a lot of stresses are happening with me, and I feel as though a blog is an appropriate way to vent. I really enjoy writing short stories, poetry, journaling, etc. I hope whomever comes across this blog will enjoy what I have to say.