shishnit.org

A few weeks ago I read a blog entry on I believe kristyk.org about the dentist. It may have been MONTHS….probably was.  It may have been soemone else’s blog..might have been.  Either way, iIt made me cringe because I have had so so many dental nightmares during my childhood.  My mother used to berrate me for each and any dental issue that was descovered at the dentist.  Going became punishment no matter what.  Even if I had no cavaties, I was admonished for the cost of being seen.  It was as if my mother was always inconvenienced by my mere existance and reliance upon her for anything monetary or emotional.  Why’d she ever have me? 

So back to my original thought, upon reading that blog entry I realized I haven’t gone..in so long that I could not recall when I went last.  And for the past 5 years I have been paying for dental coverage at my job. The last time I went they yanked a tooth because ex-husband had no dental coverage because…well I can’t recall but it was probably because he had no job or had a crap one or lost one or got fired or …yah….that old life stuff…*sigh*  It was pre-meeting Rick for sure.  And Rick and I have been together since Jan of ’03.  It’s now October of ’09. 

BLANK STARE INSERTED HERE 

I finally went.   Yesterday.  $66 later I have clean teeth and the realization that I’ll probably end up spending a ton of money on dental bills for the next few months and then again in about 5 to 7 years when I have to crown up every tooth I have. 

Why?  Because I have tons of old school metal fillings and they cause teeth to “buckle” or rather “BREAK” due to heat/cold differences in the mouth, etc. 

I was momentarily alarmed as I watched each and every one of my own teeth be paraded across a tv monitor located above my head.  I reminded myself that I’m no longer a child and there’s no longer a big fat meanie bitch in the room who will berate me on the drive home.  I berated myself momentarily for not going 5 years ago. Let me reitterate I gave up $1500 worth of dental procedures for each year I’ve worked at my job.  Can you say $6k worth of work…..pissed away due to childhood trama? 

Crazy eh? 

So..now my teeth are clean..they’ve been scraped on two quadrants and the other two are scheduled for next Friday.  Yes this is how I spend my day’s off now…sitting in a dental chair watching tooth parades and country music while some lady trys not to frown whilst looking into the cavern that is my mouth. 

After leaving the dentists office with some pretty damn expensive flouride rinse and two appointment cards for dates in October….my teeth feel raw and my gums are mortified that I had the nerve to allow someone to scrape them.  But…I conquered yet another long held fear and for that…I treated myself to coffee and a new book.  (not that I ever need an excuse!)  Today I got a TEXT MESSAGE from the dentist asking me if I’d like a text msg appointment reminder.  That dentists office is fantastic!  They have the latest technologies and everything in there is high tech.  And then when I leave…I get a text msg from my dentist.  (who was a girl by the way!)  If you reside in St Pete and need a good dentist…drop me an email at poeticalgirlAThotmail.com and I’ll tell you where to go to get a queen’s treatment. 

I’m proud of myself for finally facing it and going there and sitting through it and …and well all of it.  This month I might be blogging dentistry a lot due the costs I will incur….so if you haven’t gone to the dentist in forever….I might guilt you into it, encourage you into it or just make you sit with a BLANK STARE yourself.  I’m sharing because while it’s daunting what I’ve not done to assist my dental health…it feels good to be DOING SOMETHING now.  However, I may have to obtain a part time job if I want to really smile about all of this properly. 

You just have to read this this or this While I think one person has a right to refuse to read something, I also think a great book is taking a bad rap and this could have been handled in a more respectful way for all involved. The assignment called for the completion of two out of three books listed. This student was not REQUIRED to read the book in the first place. Blah….I do not like censorship but I do believe she WAS ALREADY GIVEN A CHOICE.

And this further angers me because I love this book and think everyone should read it. What do you think? What if this was your teenager? I can only hope that my son will one day read this book. In fact I’d hand him a copy gladly. Perhaps I’m so very liberal that I would not hid reality or literature from my son because life is more real than any book. I believe that the worst things he’s learned in life have been on the “playground” and not from any fiction book. I don’t think this girl is ready for college.

I never blog about work because that’s an area of my life that’s largely off blog limits to me. It gets too cloudy and just makes me jittery.  However, today I had a rather disturbing day personally and it caused me to realize something.

I often allow other’s to treat me poorly, I tell myself I am overlooking their treatment or issues because I’m being the bigger person but I realize that it’s really because I’m trying to be a peacekeeper and this is because of my big fear of chaos.  This fear of chaos seems, to me and my unclearness on the issue still, that it is largely due to the chaos in my childhood due to dysfunction.  I avoid chaos like the plague.  I am largely the peacekeeper in my marriage and will often apologize even when I feel I’ve done nothing wrong because apologies diffuse chaos and murky air between two people.  I prefer to clear the air and not feel uncomfortable over the “issues” just hanging in the air unresolved.  So much so that often things are not at all resolved for me and yet I tell myself they are just to move past that bad feeling.

In all of this chaos avoiding I am really harming myself because I allow all of these things that I bypass and ignore and try to disregard to build up until they are rather huge problems that I’ve allowed to fester not only within me but outside of me because I never STAND UP FOR MYSELF.  I never say “That is not ok with me; I have a problem with that!”  When you don’t voice your issues you are allowing them often times to overcome you in a more lethal way.   I do tend to “try harder” to voice myself with Rick, but I’m not nearly as fearful of him.  I do play peacekeeper too quickly for sure because I love that boy and I can’t stand to be on the outs with him at all.  There surely is a good balance in there that I could feel better about.

Now, I am just getting a handle on this in terms of understanding that I’ve been doing this and just how harmful it has gotten to my overall happiness and self peace.  I am not assertive at work because I see this as “rocking the boat”.  Now this all seems rather silly to me on another level because I almost always speak my mind, or so I thought.  However, I am coming to the realization that I am not assertive and if I even attempt assertiveness I abandon ship quickly if the matter becomes ugly just in order to maintain peace.  I’m seeing through this haze and fog that still exists that I need to face the ugly and overcome it and assert myself in order to truly be healthy mentally. Fearing honest and open communication due to the negative aspects of conflict is just wrong.

I think that 12 years of a bad marriage with virtually little to no communication didn’t help matters.  I often just took the emotional abuse and tried to “fix it” to keep any semblance of peace and quiet in my life.  I’ve often read that people that are a product of dysfunctional families seek chaos.  I often wondered if I was doing that. 

I now realize that I’m pretending it (the chaos) doesn’t exist when it does creep into my life.  I really need to work on my assertiveness and not be in constant fear of negative retaliation because of it.  I also need to stand up for myself because I need to stop being everyone’s door mat just in pursuit of wanting and seeking peace.  It only enables others to walk all over me until I’m a pulp of pain when it all catches up to me.  And also because I apologize, overlook, avoid, or play peacekeeper things don’t have a chance to come to a head and then to a resulting resolution so I’m lying to myself about peace, hiding from chaos, and nothing gets resolved.  And then when I can’t stuff anything else down, I’m on emotional overload and can’t even begin to approach the original problem anymore.

Have you had this problem?  If so, what did you do to resolve it?  

For the time being, I had a good cry during my lunch hour when it all dawned on me and I realized I am Jack and this beanstalk of a problem exists and I must overcome this.  I am also going to start by reading this book.

Ya know, because if I’m consistent about one thing, it is relying on books to inform.  If that book doesn’t help at all, I’m going straight back to therapy!!  I can no longer justify suffering when help exists.  I cannot “wishful think” this one away, it must be a goal and I need to find a clear and concise “task list” to overcome this.  Ya know, all those management courses and I’m still learning how to manage my own life.  *sigh*  I’m also still unclear and unsure if I’ve accurately pinpointed the true and real issues, I’m still finding my way and I’m really rather in shock to discover my avoidance issues.  I’ve added this as a blog category and I apologize in advance if I start to blog about this one way too much. I might become over the top….just pretend I’m a Mommy blogger having a diaper or breastfeeding outburst and ignore me if you must. No wait, that’s not very assertive on my part.  Let me rephrase that. I ‘m going through something, I’m working on it, respect me or bite the big one. 

ahhh…blog assertiveness…..that’s just not enough!

A few weekends ago I went to Target to waste time..check things out….and of course drop my normal $60 on something I didn’t need before I went in there.  Upon arriving I decided to get a soda and a pretzel for a quick snack, since their snack bar is uber cheap.

*As an aside to this normally scheduled blog post.  Does anyone else remember the snack bar that used to be at Hills, K-mart or some such store. (Hill’s stores are in the North..) where they had the tall chrome snack bar stools and food was served via a lunch tray?  I remember fondly going into some such store as a child and loving that snack bar.

After ordering my pretzel and drink I walked over to the self serve soda fountain and was filling up my cup.  Some woman that was sitting down commented to me about my hairstyle.  She said she loved it and that it was cut perfectly and the color was spot on.  I get this comment a lot. I cannot take credit for this commentary because it all goes to my hairdresser Becca.  I love Becca in a non physical way.  I have tried several times to take a photo of my hairstyle and it’s damn near impossible to do myself.  Perhaps one day I’ll ask Rick to take a picture of my hair.  Suffice it say it is not at all the reverse mullet that Kate Gosselin sports.

So…this woman compliments the hair, she has lovely hair too, we speak for awhile while I stand up 2 feet away from her at the soda machine and then I ended up sitting next to this woman who complimented my hair.  I then somehow ended up sitting there for 2+ hours chatting and bullshitting with this woman as though I knew her all my life.  She too had the “struggle with weight issues” and we specifically spoke about this to some length.  However, she had a high self esteem like me, and we chatted cheerfully about how other people perceive us, etc.  2+ hours I talked to this woman and for the life of me now I cannot recall her name, Laverne, Lorraine…it was a pretty L name of some type.  Towards the end of our delightfully unexpected connection she asked for my email address. I gave this woman my email address and my cellphone number.

It has been weeks and she has not called.

I want to know how she is.  Whatever happened with that man she was interested in.  If he accepted her date proposal. I want to know how she is.  Where she is??  You know you reach a certain age…your kids are grown and have their own friends and then outside of coworkers and long existing friendships..it’s darn near impossible to meet new friends unless you join some friend finder organization (ha! Do those exist?)  I rather liked this woman, we got along and laughed a lot.  So I want to know…..what’s going on in her world now. 

And more importantly I really want to know…

Why didn’t she call me?  Why didn’t she email…I mean emailing is non-threatening. What’s wrong with me?