The 900 Club

The day word came to me that a colleague had accessed my blog and was sending the link to the site administrator because it was "obvious" I was writing about my worksite, I called my son and told him to delete the blog immediately. Yes, I was writing about my worksite, but not using specific names/identifying information in the process. However, the person who accessed my blog is one of the most vicious co-workers I've ever met, much less had to endure, and I knew that my freedom of speech rights would not save me from her innuendo, slander, and lies -- because I'd already been victimized by her and learned that she could act with impunity, while the rest of the staff was held to a different standard. I have learned the hard way not to provide her kind of person access to control over my life because, for some people, controlling other people's destiny is a game they play day in and day out. I've learned that the only person who should have control over my life is me; if I abdicate my own control over my own life, then I deserve whatever results from that decision. Delete the blog.

Today, I'm writing Blog 900 since I started over. I write about me, my world, my ideas, my feelings, my perspective. My intent is not to change anyone else's mind, but to clarify my own thinking by putting my words onto paper and see if they stand the test of time.

I grew up in the standard dysfunctional family, with alcholism the foundation for function, so I know how the one who cannot function dictates how everyone else functions. I also was terrorized by my mother, who told me prior to her death that she never much cared for me and admitted she didn't know why, but it was too late to worry about it by that point in both our lives. Prior to her death, I wondered if I would live the rest of my life with regret or relief, and it's been a blessing to realize the relief won. I no longer feel guilty because I had no idea how to be my mother's daughter, probably because no matter how hard I tried or how many different ways I tried, I failed because it was my mother's issue, not mine. As Dr. Laura says, "it's out of my control," so all I can do is live my life and not try to fix anyone else's life. When I learned to walk away from the scathing condemnation and just live my life, my life improved, while my mother's stayed the same.

That was the lesson I had to learn: my life improved, while my mother's stayed the same. I've been applying that lesson to other aspects of my life, and I'm a happier person for doing so.

The other day, when a friend began harassing and berating me, I stood stone still and said, "Stop that! You are not just being mean to me, but you are hurting my feelings!"

When he continued with his ranting and raving, I said, "Stop that! You are attacking me for something that is beyond my control at this time. I am not going to listen to you!" I turned on my heel and walked away, leaving him to do what he's going to do without my participation.

Yesterday, he came back, and he apologized to me for first, being mean, and then, more importantly, for hurting my feelings. He said he did not even hear me because he was geared up for his own rant for his own reasons. I accepted his apology, but then walked away again because I did not want to beat a dead horse, just thank him for apologizing and be done with the incident.

While I was growing up, we (my family) didn't have feelings. We were automatons who lived life on a rigid schedule and had work, work, work as our primary focus. We were judged on the job we did, or the job we redid until we got it right. I learned at an early age that what I do is more important than who I am. For too many years of my life, there was no me, no individual person, until my world came crashing down on me in 1997, when I learned that it did not matter what I did or how well I did it. My dysfunction became my personal weakness, and when other people in your life realize your weakness, they have a portal for destroying you.

I survived, but I have never been the same person again. My self to that time was lost, and it took a long, long time for me to find a self that could become me so I could continue with my life. There were many times that I wished simply to die, to be done with this life because it was incredibly painful to be a me I didn't know and an I I couldn't live with. I could no longer immerse myself in work and make the pain go away because my work-as-my-self was taken from me. I had no idea how to be me because I had never in my life known who I was, especially separate from my work. I lived in a hole and pulled the cover over that dark place to keep myself safe from ever being attacked again as I was at that time, in that place, and by that person.

Today, I'm out of the hole, experimenting with this person I try to become. I don't socialize much because I don't trust people. In the last several years, I've had to cut people out of my life because I realized that I was setting myself up again for other dysfunctional people who perceived my personal weaknesses and were using them to prop up their own dysfunctional lives. I watch people with whom I come into contact in the course of my work day, and I see the same people from my past darkness, the ones who share their surface selflessness with colleagues, but hide their egocentrically driven selves until it benefits them to spring upon their unwary adversary. I watched one colleague set up another over the past year and tried to warn her that she had an enemy. When the trap was sprung, I saw the smile of victory upon the lips of the conqueror and the tightly-shut door of the vanquished. Been there/done that; won't ever be there or do that again.

It's ugly when life is merely a game that some people are determined to win at any cost. For me, life is about how I play the game, not whether I win or lose. I enjoy what I do regardless of the outcome, but I've learned that is not the strategy of the rest of the world. In an experiment, I set myself up to play 1000 games of Free Cell to see what my winning percentage would be when I finished game 1000. I am proud to say that I reached 77%, but to the majority of the world, that's only a C+. For me, that's better than good because I play to enjoy the game, not to win every hand. If I apply this life lesson to my life, I can expect to win 77% of the time just by enjoying whatever happens. If I focus on the 23% of the time that I'm going to lose, my life is also going to focus on losing, rather than enjoying the winning that seems to happen often enough to be just right for me.

I'm at Blog 900 and it's all about me, me, me, a focus I tried to limit during the past writing, but which statistically probably has resulted in 675 blogs, compared to 225 blogs about the rest of the world. I enjoy celebrating my wins, especially when I play the game my way, rather than allowing anyone else to dictate who I am, who I c/should be, and how my life is going. Perhaps I need to work more on leveling the blogs to more fairly represent the rest of the world, but we have news readers to do that for us, right?