megfowler.com

One of the searches that led to my blog today was “strategies to keep people from pushing my buttons.”

Let me be honest with you, pilgrim of the Internet: you ain’t gonna find those here.

I’m a pretty patient person when it comes to children and old people (and folks who lack control over their personality or activities, for whatever reason, as long as your name isn’t Lindsay Lohan) but man… I have no idea how to prevent my buttons from being pushed if someone really wants to push them.

Hell, they don’t even need to TRY… sometimes it just happens, and before you know it, I’ve gone from 0 to GRRR without any stops in between.

Last night was one of those nights.

After a long day of feeling overtired and disconnected and frustrated, I came home with a Meg-perfect plan of making salmon and doing my laundry.

(I know. Fish and whites are not usually big fantasy items for the 30-something girl, but my life is much less Sex and the City than it is Tide with Downy.)

And things seemed straightforward… at first.

I was wearing my yoga pants, tidying my room, recovering my sanity… mmm! All was well.

Then I went downstairs to switch over the loads and… oh.

Flood.

After 45 minutes of mopping and toweling the floor and squeezing out anything that was sitting on the floor (including my mattress pad), I had a wicked backache and a dread of calling my landlord.

Especially since I don’t have his number. Catherine does.

And she was napping, after her own bad day.

But I woke her from her slumber, since the spectre of a flood seemed to outweigh the guilt of waking Catherine.

By the time I got back downstairs, the paint on the floor was lifting in giant bubbles. What?

Within an hour, we’d hear from our landlord that he’d painted it the previous week. Oh. Well.

Then I smashed off the other half of my toenail tripping down the stairs when I went to hang the floormats from the laundry room to dry. Have you ever tried to have a decent looking pedicure with jagged, scary nub toes? Yeah. Awesome.

None of these things was the end of the world, although my impending migraine looked as though it might try for that status. But my buttons were right on the surface by that point, ready to be brushed EVEN ACCIDENTALLY.

Even, say, by friends on IM?

Sure.

Within ten minutes, three perky people were textually shot down in a rather dramatic fashion — one for chiding me for indulging my mood, one for lecturing me on the correct use of washing machines, and one… well, just for being my dad. Because he knows his daughter well, however, he’s the only one who stayed in the game to make fun of me, while the other two left in a Meg-induced huff within moments.

Nice. Well played, girl.

After the wash of guilt for feeling all entitled to my bitchiness washed over me, I thought, “Why are you such a cow sometimes? Why do you think it’s okay to wield your attitude like a shiv in conversations with people you care about? Why do you feel like your mood and your experiences matter to that extent in any given moment?”

I’m not saying you can’t vent to your friends and have awkward moments and break down now and then. But since when did I become the kind of person who buys “Get out of my way!” PMS mugs and perfects the three-snaps-and-a-head-waggle? When did I become the kind of person who would smirk and call myself a bitch?

Bleah.

I don’t even like that crap. I think it’s arrogant. I think it’s self-justifying. But apparently, I’m all up in owning my anger to the extent where I expect everyone else to own the consequences with a giant boot mark to the ass.

My friends will tell you that I used to be a doormat, and that now I’ve become a bit of a hermit.

Not that I lost social skills, but I’ve learned to deal with painful experiences through self-isolation rather than self-denial. Which isn’t really a better path, but it’s been a rough couple years. I was cutting myself some slack. And my friends are pretty patient, even when my walls make them want to go find a wrecking ball.

But now it looks like I’m moving into the entitlement phase, where however I feel is how I’m going to be.

I’m becoming a giant human button, just waiting to be pushed.

I recall ranting to my friend once that I “hate small talk! I hate it when people ask how I am! I hate it when they want to know what I’m up to! I hate conversational conventions! I hate it when I get told to “cheer up!” I hate it when…”

And he looked at me, completely deadpan, and replied, “Gee, I can’t think why no one wants to dig deeper into that magic.”

Right.

I’ll figure it out, I guess.

But in the meantime, I think I better just learn to shut the hell up and not expose everyone to however I feel like feeling in the moment. Because I can’t really see anyone sticking around for that.