Kvetching

I just read a post on a blog I follow that spoke about complaining. Now, unfortunately, that is a subject I know a bit about. I can be quite the kvetcher, myself. I have toned it down over the years. I've been given a lot to complain about in my life. Unfortunately, like an old threat I remember from my youth, "I'll give you something to cry about," fate turned on me and did
just that. Now the things I used to complain about, job etc., sure seem like small problems
and something that I wish was my biggest hurdle now. I wondered how I ever got in the habit
to begin with. I remember my father, who worked for a Ford dealership for many years before
going into business for himself, sitting at the dinner table complaining to my mother about his
day at work night after night. The dealership was family owned and one of the brothers was an absolute tyrant. He made everyone there miserable.
My father ran the whole parts and service departments but was always a handy guy too and whenever the heat broke, roof leaked, etc, they called on good ol' Johnny to fix it. Maybe that's where I picked up the idea that this was what conversation was. You bitched about the injustices in your life. My teen years did get rough for awhile. I had a sister who decided her goal in life was to make my life a living hell. She did a pretty good job of it. My first love, Eric, helped me escape that. It wasn't that I left home, just
that he was all that mattered and I was out with him more than home so my sister's impact started to lessen. About the time I broke up with him and started dating Tim, my fainting spells had begun. It morphed into a very long nightmare of agoraphobia, doctor bills and missed chances at a diagnosis that took years to come by. In 2001, with a 3 year old, I then started another nightmare of severe vertigo. I was many times unable to function. Went from doctor to doctor. Some days, I could not even walk. I was told I almost definitely had MS or some other
degenerative disease, then meniere's disease, and other things including TMJ disorder. It was
actually several years before this finally went away and I still suffer some lasting effects from it.
During this time, I did some research on my black-outs and went to a doctor in New York City.
He told me very simply what I had. Not long after, the local cardiologist, who was the first one
I saw with this problem at 19, looked at my reports and said, "Oh yes, you have that." These tests looked the same as they did 18 years earlier when he said they were normal. I watched half
my life go down the tubes because of an "electrical problem" that should have been diagnosed at the get go. They say don't cry over spilt milk. Well, it's hard to have the joy, independence, and any normalcy whatsoever sucked out of what should have been the best years of my life and not be just a little bummed. I had many other health scares over the years. Too many to mention. I finally started to drag myself out of the agoraphobia and just when life was starting to look a little bit normal, Tim was diagnosed with MM. Sometimes, it does feel like if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. I do have a very strong sense of justice and I don't like injustices anywhere. I know life isn't fair but I rebel against that none-the less. I just plain don't like it when nice guys finish last and bad things happen to good people. I wonder sometimes if people kvetch about all the petty little annoyances in life because it's a way to avoid
thinking about the really BIG things really going on in their lives. Or maybe for some of us, we've
just had it with the way things are, and the unfairness of it all sometimes, and wonder why it has to be that way. Why can't some people cut a freekin' break and others just seem to fall into good fortune at every turn. And usually, the ones that can't get a break are the nicest, most generous people and the ones who "step in it" are the most selfish, sidewinding jerks you ever knew. I do know one thing. When you get hit with the whopper problems, it makes all those petty things seem stupid. You listen to people complain and think, "wow, if that was my biggest worry today, I'd be dancing a jig." It's all relative though. People's problems are very real to themselves even if they seem petty to someone else. Olivia and I were walking our puppy downtown shortly after we got her. We live just a block or so from a shopping area of our town. Lacey was just 3 months old. I had a poop bag with me and being just a puppy, she started to poop right on the sidewalk outside a store. The whole area is street and sidewalks with the exception of little trees in 4 foot square mulch beds on each block. By the time I realized what she was doing, it was too late to get her to a tree. So I took the bag out of my pocket and I saw a woman walking toward us all dressed up and strutting down the street in her high heeled boots. I warned her to be careful where she was walking as she was heading right toward it and did not see that I was about to pick up my puppy's "business" and she shot me the most snobby, obnoxious look and mumbled something snotty on top of it. I was so ticked. I felt like going up to this uppity jerk and saying, "hey, my husband has cancer. If the worse thing that happens to you today is that you had to take 3 extra steps to walk around some puppy poop, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS!"
There are times I wish we could move from here. I think people in general have too much money around here. Many are just self-important, snooty, and not friendly at all. There are times we are on vacation and we enjoy being around the friendly people so much, we don't want to go home. It gets to me. But back to complaining( oh yeah, that's what I was doing anyway), I have found that the only way to keep my sanity while dealing with all these hard things that have invaded our lives is to try to find the silver linings. Count the blessings you do have. Remember that it could always be worse, so take the good wherever and whenever you find it. Kvetching is carthartic and it relieves tension. You get it off your chest and you feel lighter but I guess you can get too far into the habit and start feeling like a victim too much. If you wake up thinking, " I wonder what cruddy thing is gonna happen today" you'll be focusing on every negative that pops up. Much better to wake up and say, "today's gonna be a great day" and go to bed remembering all the positive things that happened that day to make that true. It's not easy
to curb complaining, especially when it's your nature and you have quite a bit to bi*** about,
but you really can get yourself in a rut if you do it too much. Well off to bed, I fell down the back stairs today and I'm hurting. It's always something. ;o)