Hi everybody, thank you, sorry for not being more responsive, I'm feeling very tired all the time at the minute and not motivated to do much. Hopefully that will change once the Christmas and New Year disruption is behind us.
I have continued to practise being assertive. Inside it messes me up but I need things to be different externally so I'm doing it anyway.
We had a trip down South planned for the New Year. It was an impromptu trip that was suggested by others as for various reasons there are a number of people we know in from overseas, plus a few others from different parts of the UK, none of whom we've seen for a very long time, so a reunion of sorts was being planned. I've been very conscious since Covid of how quickly the end can come for any of us, so I didn't want to miss the chance to see all of these people together in one place.
It was a big stretch for us, both in terms of money and practical planning, as well as many hundreds of miles to drive and so on. But I still felt it was too good an opportunity to pass up, and I'm trying to take a problem solving approach to everything now, so we wangled and juggled and organised and it had all fallen into place.
There have been dozens of messages back and forth over the last couple of months sorting out a date, time and place that everyone could do and once that was finalised, we built our trip around that. I'd planned to arrive the day before, rest up a bit in the hotel beforehand so that we were both able to enjoy 'the day', then I'd planned a quiet recovery day the day after, another day of stuff my son enjoys and then a final day to travel home (kitty got booked in with different sitter so we didn't have to navigate the crazy lady).
I don't know how you lot feel about this, but I don't explain my son's disability requirements to other people in any detail because it's no-one else's business and he isn't the sum of his disabilities. There are certain things we need to do and put in place, but I can do that without any fuss and all I need for it to work is other people to honour the arrangements they made and/or do anything they're supposed to do. I think that's pretty straightforward. I also don't wang on about money being tight or long drives making my arthritis play up, because again, it's my business and all of those things are manageable, hence scheduling in rest time, recovery time and so on.
So we'd arranged what we needed to and were all set. Final messages were just before Christmas Eve, everyone is set, everyone is onboard. To my mind nothing else was needed until the day came to pack and head off.
Boxing Day, messages were sent, very early, two people have decided it is more convenient now for them to do a different date, and the whole thing was turned into chaos. To my mind, the possibility of changing it all shouldn't have been entertained; if they've decided it no longer suits them then they just don't come (there's probably a dozen other people involved). I said that, and pointed out that we were travelling a long way, we'd made arrangements regarding hotel bookings and pet sitters, plus other activities we were planning on doing afterwards, and that we couldn't change those around now so we needed to stick to the original arrangement.
No-one got back to us about it. We were left hanging with no idea what was going on, knowing that if they changed the date we couldn't attend and would be taking an expensive and unnecessary trip for no reason. We've got cancellation cover in place, but you have to do things within a certain period of time otherwise you lose money and we still have the New Year bank holidays to navigate, which delays things and means certain people aren't contactable again for a couple of days as they close for the New Year.
My instinct was to contact everyone, try to save the visit or spend two days ringing around getting everything changed and swapping things about. I resisted but it felt hard - people pleaser not people pleasing isn't a nice place to be. I didn't contact anyone and no-one contacted me and that was hard - decades of rejection memories bubbling to the surface and I have tried to just sit with it and let it be but my word, it doesn't feel nice. And the feeling of invisibility being very strong again - everyone knows how far we're travelling, everyone knows we're not flush with cash, everyone knows my son has disabilities - but none of it seems to register and people feel it's fine to change plans on a whim with no thought for anyone else involved. It's felt very unpleasant and not dealing with the unpleasant feelings has been even more unpleasant! Normally I'd soothe myself by bending over backwards to make everything right and I didn't this time. A case of it feeling wrong even though you know it's right.
Yesterday evening I decided that I'd given everyone more than enough time to get back to me and that I no longer felt inclined to make that long journey and spend money on a trip to see people who had made me feel that I didn't matter. I completely understand things needing to change because of emergencies or unseen events, but this has all been organised for weeks and suddenly, a couple of people changed their minds - and to an extent were indulged? by others who should have said no straight away and didn't.
I don't feel good about it. I feel worthless and like I don't have a right to make demands of others or to assert myself, even though I know, logically, that expecting people to stick to arrangements is perfectly acceptable and putting our own needs first is the right thing to do. I did go ahead and cancel all the arrangements we'd made, so we will get a full refund and we haven't lost anything in that regard.
Late evening I got a message from the organiser and it was still going ahead for the original date planned. I felt, and feel bad, that I'm not going now, but at the same time I felt that leaving us not knowing what was happening for two days wasn't on and that it wasn't reasonable for us to risk losing the money we'd paid for the room if we ended up not being able to go. I was also worried that even if it was sorted out this time, we could get another call with the same thing happening again. It didn't feel like the others going had made it a concrete date in their diaries, but to me it felt really important. That's a flashpoint for me as well, attaching more importance to others than they attach to me. I end up feeling stupid and humiliated.
Anyway. I feel it was the right thing to do, I'm just waiting for my emotions to catch up and reflect that back to me
Sorry for waffling on, I'm feeling very self indulgent at the minute and I know that this isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things and that many others have much worse things to cope with. I think it's just an example of how a relatively small day to day thing unleashes so much in me that I'm trying to work through but am constantly feeling swamped by. I do find the lack of routine and structure over the Christmas and New Year period, as does my son, and ironically I didn't organise many things to fill the time because of the trip we had planned. So I might have a look and see if we can organise a day out somewhere or find some other activities to do.
In other news, the person I pulled up on the snidey remark? I think it's actually improved things, we've had a couple of chats since then that have been really good, she's opened up to me a bit, I have to her so I think that bit of 'reality' helped? Which is nice, I guess that's what the 'being authentic' is all about, it's just for me it usually results in the other person never speaking to me again. So it's good that it seems to have been a positive in this situation.
Hope everyone else has been having a good/amazing/tolerable time, depending on circumstances.
PS - Why, after half a century of being on this planet and having tackled many, many things in my life do I still, for some reason, get up on Christmas morning and eat an entire Terry's Chocolate Orange??! And then feel sick afterwards. It's very silly. Lol x
