Game Over, Try Again

My tolerance for the bullshit is wearing thin. The neighbor who is incapable of managing her emotions today felt the need to, in front of the council and the few attendees who had arrived by that time, show her true colors in public. How embarrassing… for her. 

The incident happened as the space was filling up at the council meeting tonight, and I was at the front, sitting with the other council members facing the room. As my neighbor came in, she sat down and started chatting with some of the other women already seated. I had waved hello to her as she sat down. As soon as I was looking down, preparing the minutes, she was like, look at our council secretary, isn’t she so pretty? Out loud, and I was like, is she talking to me? So I look up, and I see her smiling. But it’s the kind of smile where I knew she wasn’t just complimenting me to be nice, so I just kept on writing. 

Sure enough, she finishes by saying, See? She doesn’t even accept the compliment because she knows the opposite is true. Whoomp, there it is. I called it from a mile away. The fake compliment intended as an insult. Fortunately, because I was expecting the insult, my feelings weren’t hurt. 

She’s being petty in retaliation because I am too busy lately. This was an intentional jab at me, meant to make me feel bad because she’s either jealous, envious, or angry (or all of the above) that I don’t have time to be at her beck and call lately and instead have been tied up with council business. She says as much at every opportunity. She chides me that I should know better than to spend all my time on council business, that I need to set better boundaries or I’ll get taken advantage of. 

The only problem here is the same problem that plagues so many of the people who live in this Colonia: they’re all about the do as I say, not as I do school of thought. People who live here, my neighbor, case in point, have a weird short-term memory problem. They act like no one remembers what they did before, so they behave like pattern recognition isn’t a thing. She thinks I don’t remember all the petty things she does. She acts like they don’t add up, like each day wipes the slate clean. Like I am not going to remember tonight, and add it to the growing list of petty ass shit behavior from her.

According to her, my time is only being wasted, or my boundaries are only being abused, when it’s anybody else but her doing the time wasting or abusing of boundaries. Sounds familiar.

So here, in this council space where I’m doing what she sees as the thing that “stole” me away, she wants the stab to make me feel some kind of way. It failed first because I’d have to care what she thought about me, which I don’t, especially when she’s so petty, and I don’t give a shit about petty. 

Second, I’d have to hinge my self-esteem and validation on external factors, and I healed from that a long time ago, especially when past outside factors (my mother, my father, the ex, fake friends, etc) made it clear that I would never measure up in their eyes. So I quit caring.

So it’s another instance of: not gonna work on me. That’s just the same shit, different day in the life of LisawithnoL. 

I’ve got the most deluded parent on the planet! My neighbor hasn’t even sunk to the levels of petty I’ve experienced. Nor will it break me cause I literally don’t give a fuck.

Game over. Try again. 

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