Wait till you hear how this day ended. It started all right. When walking Elsa, there was Scott out on the road waiting for Yvette at 6 am. A little early for a 7:30 am Bikram class. When he and Yvette left, I was coming back from my walk. Yvette showed me a book on meditations. She and Scott were heading to the beach to meditate. When I got to Bikram, they were there. I did more work on the small toes of my left foot. Ah, yesterday, while working in the garden, I was able to push myself up using my left leg-- while holding on to two trees and hauling myself up. It was still new.
Today I worked in the garden collecting all the garden waste in one place so that the gardeners could gather it up and take it away. Now that the garden is cleaner, I can continue working on the heavy weeding.
I had a telephone appointment with my therapist at 11. I’m working on dealing with the inner tolerance for others. My intolerance is not particularly pronounced until you push my buttons. Then it comes through loud and clear.
And to that point. Kathrin borrowed m car to go to the farmers market and Safeway. She left at 1:30. While she was gone, I got a call from Scott’s friend who may fix the dented fenders on my car. One of them is causing a scraping sound on my front left tire when I make right turns. He said he would stop by to take a look at the car sometime before 7 pm when he had an appointment in my neighborhood. I texted her and told her I needed the car by 6:15. She asked me if I needed anything from the store. I said, no, thank you. She said, you’re welcome.
She was home promptly by 6:15. I thanked her and told her that I was worried, given her behavior the other night. She asked to borrow the car to go to the beach to see the sunset. Long after the sunset, I finally texted her to see if she was okay. She said she was just thinking of texting me herself. I was expecting her home after sunset. But, no, she fell in love with the moon. Great! But she should have informed me. She said she lost touch with time. Didn’t she notice if the sun had set?
She tells me that I’m trying to control her because I expect her to text me as to her plans after being gone for 3 hours. I’m not respecting her lifestyle and who she is. We’re different, and I’m not taking this into account. Has anyone seen me get angry? Well, you should have been there.
I am not the best when I get angry; I must admit. My voice gets loud, I interrupt, and I can be blisteringly sarcastic. The good news is she could hold her own with me, telling me to wait when I did interrupt. The bad news was that she accused me of controlling her because I wouldn’t allow her to use my car for free for as long as she wanted to without contacting me. Boy, she pressed a pretty impressive button. Now I was really angry. She was telling me that she expected me to do everything for her convenience. I told her she could do whatever she wanted as long as it didn’t involve me or my car. She thought I should know that she would be endlessly involved in conversations wherever she went, and I was suppressing her. Oh, dear. I’m not interested in dealing with someone who thinks I’m controlling them.
I spoke to Judy. She flipped out that this 30-year-old would live in my house for free, use my car for free would say I was trying to control her if I insisted that she give me an exact time when she expected to return the car or text me.
There was another similar incident came up last Sunday. She introduced me to a group of Krishnas on the island who had regular Sunday feast days with some religious ceremonies. I found it very interesting and the food delicious. However, she always wanted to stay much longer than I did. My idea of saying good-bye is a quick dash around the room. The last time we went, the group broke up late, and I was particularly anxious to get home. I told her I wanted to go home. Without a backward glance, she told me she had to say good-bye. An alternative would be her asking me, “Can you give me a minute? I want to say good-bye.”
I watched her converse with one woman for at least a minute, if not longer. More distressing, I saw no signs in her body language that she was saying, “I have to make this quick because Betty wants to get going.” Her idea of saying good-bye is an extended conversation with everyone in the room. I told her if she wanted to engage in prolonged conversations, she should find some other way to get home. She found another participant to drive her home, and I left. I thought the solution was a good one: a win/win situation. As far as she was concerned, she felt I was disrespectful of her. Judy said she sounded like a millennial.
During our confrontation, I told her if she felt controlled by my need to keep tabs on my car, I wouldn’t lend her the car. That way, we would both have what we wanted: she wouldn’t feel controlled, and I would know where my car was. I also talked about the possibility of her moving out.
I prepared my meal. We avoided each other except for a few passing exchanges. I had trouble concentrating on my meal and the book I was reading because I struggled with what I was going to do and say. I was giving myself a week to decide if she had to go or not. I like that she could stand up to me, but she addressed me as if we had equal rights to the house and the car. Ah, maybe not. Having a sense of entitlement is good but within limits.
I went into the library afterward. I was still agitated. I was trying to figure out what to do about this situation. If Kathrin feels we have equal rights to this house and the car, we have a problem. Kathrin came to the library and said she would stay at a friend’s for the night and move out tomorrow. I said that I thought it would be a good idea; we have different ideas on how to relate. From what she said, she has been harboring some critical thoughts about me.
I am sorry I didn’t hear those critical thoughts. I can always learn from it even if no one who knows me well agrees with it. There is always some truth in what they have to say. If nothing else, it helps me understand how other people think and guides me on how to relate to them. It’s all good. I’m sorry we can’t work it out, but it looks like we can’t. I find I am relieved that the decision has been taken out of my hands. I will sleep well tonight.
Josh came up while the fight was on. He quickly walked in and then out. I thought he left because he didn’t want to intrude. I knew he had come up to find the power cord for the stationary bike. When Kathrin and I were through, I grabbed two miscellaneous power cords and ran down to his house. He had left quickly because he had found one plugged into a power strip pointing to the bike. I just sat there in his house and tried to calm down.
I am more upset by this whole experience than Mike’s death. I feel good about how I was as his wife when he was alive and as his companion and support in those five weeks in the hospital. I associate loving and being loved with all those experiences. Not that there wasn’t occasional acting out. Mike liked to say, ‘Our marriage works because there is always one adult present, and it’s not always the same one.” There was no adult present in my confrontation with Kathrin. If anything, she was more adult in the tone of it, but not in her expectations. I don’t think you can say she is not functioning as an adult, but just as an adult with a strong sense of her rights.
She said my need to be contacted because I was concerned about the car was my problem. Can you picture the smoke coming out of my ears? Mike and I didn’t judge each other’s needs. We responded with how we were comfortable responding or not responding. We weren’t expected to go way beyond our limits. However, we were expected to do whatever we could to accommodate the other’s needs without significant self-sacrifice. We never expected the other to change something about themselves just because the other one wanted it. We both believed that we were better off as we made adjustments to each other’s needs. We became bigger people. We did expect the other one to contemplate how they could make that adjustment. I think we both had confidence in the other’s intent — that created room for a great deal of tolerance and patience. We didn’t betray each other. Will I ever have this relationship with another human being again?
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