Not crazy!

I turned 32 a week ago yesterday and for my birthday, I received clear evidence that I am not a crazy person.

This, in turn, led to my being more confident in dealing with other people! 

For example:

I lost my temper with Ryan. But not unwarrantedly so. And then, I stuck to my guns and told him to figure out a way to make it right, instead of my usual tactic of trying to make the bad feelings go away as quickly as possibly by fuming for awhile, then apologising for losing my temper and for everything else, really. 

Our infrequent arguments usually go something like this: Ryan infuriates me, I become cross, he decides that I am being irrational, I become even more cross because I am feeling marginalised, ignored and occasionally gaslighted - which is a horrible feeling. 

Then Ryan moves on and tries to forget the argument, which is horribly uncomfortable for me because I spent an entire childhood and young adulthood watching my parents fight horribly and my mother doing everything in her power to make the shouting stop, which mostly meant agreeing with whatever my father said and then ignoring that it ever happened as soon as it was over. 

In an effort to avoid this state of affairs, I try and talk about it, but because I am terrified of him or anyone being cross with me, I apologise for my behaviour. Ryan never does. But I hate fighting so, so much that I just am willing to move on (it makes me so ill!). Which is not exactly much different from my mother's tactic except that we do, actually, usually, talk about what the problem is. 

Since Ryan and I rarely ever fight, this is not such a frequent thing. But it does happen and I end up feeling rotten either way. 

Anyway. 

Another example! 

I received a text from Casey asking me if I wanted to ride in the Tony clinic she had coming up. Instead of my ingratiating: "Yes! I'll ride whomever you want!" I wrote back, "I would like to. Can I ride a horse as opposed to a pony?" 

I received no answer, but am confident that I did the right thing, even if I do not get to participate, because I'll be damned if I'm paying another ring fee to school her medium ponies in a lesson that I am also paying for. She didn't get back to me for days and then it was some garbled message about trying but things are super busy! and blacksmith bills (which I'm not sure have anything to do with anything although I bet there is some tangent that connects them that she neglected to tell me about because that happens a lot)! and keeping the horses fit!

Here's the thing: other people are allowed to just show up and borrow her horses for lessons without getting passive-aggressive shit for not helping keep them fit or helping with blacksmith bills.

So it may mean that I don't get a Tony lesson, but I'm also glad I stuck to my guns. And that gave me the bravery to request the nice sales horse (as opposed to saying "I'll take whomever you want me to! I'm just happy to get to go!") for the hunter pace on Saturday.

So here's to self-improvement and realising that I'm not necessarily as crazy as I thought.