Archive for September 7th, 2017
The Quest for Self-Acceptance, Part 2…
Folks, I wrote about how damned hard I find the quest for self-acceptance to be a few days ago. But yesterday, I had a very odd experience that I’d like to share with you…and then, I’m going to give you the links to all the other wonderful bloggers who were part of the Collaboration for a Purpose — Self-Love/Acceptance blogging circle. (Yeah, I should’ve done this earlier, but I hope you’ll see why it took me a bit of doing this time.)
I’d like to set the scene a little bit, if I may.
I was in my car, and it was quite early (for me, at least). I hadn’t had anything to eat yet, and I’d just dropped a family member off for an important appointment. She’d asked me if I could go shopping for her while she was at this appointment, and of course I said yes.
Anyway, I pulled into a parking spot. (No biggie, right? We do this all the time, we with cars.) And another car parked very, very close next to me, so close that I knew if I got out, my door would almost certainly bump the other car a little no matter how hard I tried. (This is partly because I walk with a cane, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t get out of the car easily with that cane nine times out of ten.) And this is exactly what happened, but my car door did not leave a mark of any sort as far as I could tell.
Most people, of course, are forgiving. But I happened to run into the one person in all of Southeastern Wisconsin who just wasn’t…and she was very belligerent and rude.
This woman (a passenger sitting in the car; the driver had already gone into the store) would not let me walk away, would not leave me be, and I just had it…and I ended up having a panic attack, right there in the parking lot.
I am not proud of this.
Yeah, this other woman was horrid. There’s no question about it. But I could not love this person, and I could not love myself either as I couldn’t figure out how to de-escalate the situation other than walking away, which I eventually did. (The woman continued her verbal abuse all the way into the store, mind.)
What I can tell you is that this story has a happy ending of sorts. I found the driver of the car, and she told me it was fine. She even gave me a hug, and she told the passenger (from what I could tell, as I stayed inside the store to keep away from that older woman) to get back in the car and stop it. (Bless her for that, too.)
I know we all have days like this, where Murphy’s Law rules the day and nothing at all seems to go right. But all we can do is try to get past it, and in my case, the way I did this was to talk to a couple of my best friends. They helped me put this into perspective. And they gave me hope that my horrible, no good, very bad day didn’t mean I was a horrible person.
It does make me wonder, though, about context. And about some of the stuff I’ve seen over the years that weren’t good things to do, but perhaps actually would’ve been comprehensible in context…such as parents yelling at their kids in public (something no parent ever wants to do, but sometimes does anyway). It makes me wonder what happened before that point that made it all escalate to the point of yelling.
And if any of these other people actually were having panic episodes, rather than just being downright rude…
Anyway, that’s today’s follow-up regarding the quest for self-acceptance. I will keep working on it, and remind myself that (as a good friend put it), “Your blooper reel is not a fair comparison to someone else’s glamour shot.”
Now, please go see these other lovely people’s blogs, as they’re all worthwhile and interesting in their own right:
Camilla Motte at Moms on the Go
Nicolle K. (Nicolle also created the picture for this round’s Collaboration with a Purpose that you see above, and I think she did a fantabulous job)
Tajwar Fatma (she who started this whole shebang)
Joel A. Scott (he’s new this time around, so make sure to give him a warm welcome!)
Barb Caffrey's Blog 