ShadowMeTeresa

The last couple of weeks, I’ve had occasion to feel angry more often than usual. This is not a feeling that I like having, or feel very often, and I was having an especially hard time today shaking it. I thought it might be interesting (to me, at least) to write down the sources of my anger and see if I can learn anything from them.

Most immediately, there was the escrow company. Today, I was to sign the papers to refinance my mortgage. Yesterday, my broker called and said they would see me at 3, and that they would call and confirm the appointment. All I had was an address and a name – no phone number. And no call from them, so I just showed up, checkbook in hand, figuring that if there were some special instructions they would have told me.

They weren’t there. Their office had moved, which they had not bothered to tell my broker. It was all the way across town (back near where I live). Finding a notice to delivery persons on their old door, I managed to obtain the new address and phone number and called them to explain that I would be late. They chose that time to inform me not only that I needed a cashier’s check or I would lose my lock, but that the closing fees were about $2000 higher than I had expected. No information on why. According to her, she had only received my loan forms “20 minutes ago” and had never heard of me until that moment; never mind that it was their office who had asked for the 3 pm appt the day before. She wanted me to come in and sign the forms without knowing what the extra money was for, and without time to get the cashier’s check, which would mean a separate trip to the bank another day, all so she could stay on schedule. I declined.

I went home, called my broker, found out what the extra costs were for (timing of paying taxes, which would get refunded), went to my bank to get a cashier’s check, and informed the escrow company that I was coming over with the check at 4:30 and they would find a way to fit me in that day. They did; but I was angry for hours afterwards. Part of the problem was trying not to be too rude to them, given that I was going to have to sit in a small office with that same person for an hour going over forms, which wouldn’t make it any better for either of us.

Another incident had a similar pattern, now that I think of it. Both myself and my neighbor have had a lot of construction going on, at times quite noisy. It has been hard to work at home; I’ve had to forgo a number of conference calls (torture, I know) because it was too noisy to subject everyone else to them. This was OK, even though I was losing hundreds of dollars in billable hours to it; I’m not that hard up.

Then came a day when I had a conference call with the assistant directors of 5 agencies and three Indian tribes, which I was leading. The neighbor’s contractor chose that day to conduct one of his noisiest tasks. I went over in the morning to ask if we could work around my one-hour call in the afternoon, which I needed some quiet for. He agreed to put off working for that one hour – but then went to lunch and didn’t return until right before the call, and started to work. When I went over and let him know the call was about to start, he didn’t want to stop working, and told me I should pay his men if I didn’t like the noise. A perfect way to gain the calm and peaceful introspection I really needed before that call.

Lastly, there has been this project that just makes me want to flee to Mexico. It’s gotten so political that it’s taking a toll on all of us. Long-standing colleagues that I like and respect are under so much stress that their own handling of the data seems to be stretching its integrity, and people are looking for the easy way out. Numbers are getting fudged, statistics bent, and things left unsaid in public meetings. Partly because management at some of our agencies are not standing up and saying what needs to be said, and staff are having to take the heat. I can’t decide whether I get angrier when someone I like and trust does something squirrelly with the data, or at the situation that is so bad that it could possibly make that seem like a reasonable thing to do.

So what is it that ticks me off? Incompetence is one, paired with an uncaring attitude that leads to substantial inconvenience for others. Making mistakes is one thing – being an ass about it is another. Compromise of integrity is big-time for me, I think, and something that makes me really angry. Dishonesty in any of these situations, even the little white lies people make up to cover their own carelessness and disregard.

I’m not really sure what this blog is for, other than to try to set down and work out some of this anger I’ve been feeling. Interestingly enough, I can’t bring myself to feel angry about the larger state of the world. I think I gave up on that so long ago (even though I still try to work toward making things better) that I don’t really feel either anger or hope about it. And I almost never get angry at someone really close to me – maybe because I know how destructive I can be if I ever let my tongue loose. So either I don’t actually feel it at all, or I don’t allow myself to. It takes years of an ongoing issue before I’ll start to feel some anger toward someone I really care about, and if it gets to that point at all, it’s probably too late. I’ve never been one to fight in a relationship, preferring talking and thinking things through above all else. To me, nothing seems more destructive to love or friendship than anger.

So my anger appears to be reserved for targets that are immediate to my life, but relatively “safe”, in that getting angry at them won’t come at great personal cost. A tad selfish in that respect, perhaps. Hopefully I don’t let it out at people who really don’t deserve it :D You can be the judge, based on what you’ve read. What makes you angry?

For some of you more professional or casual acquaintances who read this blog, if the details of my dating life are TMI, this might be a good place to stop … But for all my good friends, this is a coming out of sorts. Something’s been occupying my mind lately, and normally when that happens, I blog about it. This is one topic that’s been off limits, because it’s related to (~whispers) sex. And that’s just not something I normally talk about here. But it’s just as much about love, and friendship, and who I am. So I decided to just jump in. I’m interested in living an honest life – it’s pretty much the most important part of my philosophy these days. And just because my family and colleagues might be reading this (gulp) this can’t be nearly as hard as it was for my gay friends.

So here’s the out-of-the-closet part – I’m bi. I don’t mean this in a night out, just playing, bi-curious way. I’m talking life partners, lovers, friends, what have you. I’ve never felt the need to exclude an entire half of the population from any way that I might feel about anyone, just because of their gender. This feeling started in high school, and I’ve just gotten more confirmed in my certainty about it as I’ve gotten older. People are people, and I like, love, and am passionate about them because of who they are.

Here’s the weird thing. It’s hard to be seriously bi. It’s easy to be playfully bi, and have a lot of fun that way. But very few people take it seriously as an orientation. My husband never took it seriously when I had feelings for women, which could have been a real mistake on his part. But it seems most guys feel the same way – which makes it a little easier to be yourself, but at the same time, easier to have things become truly complicated. To most guys, it’s just a fantasy that they can’t really feel threatened by. They don’t seem to really understand that they could lose you to a woman just as easily as to another man.

At the same time, lesbian women generally won’t give you the time of day. I swear they’ve got some kind of radar that tells them that you’re not truly a dyke or whatever, committed to the lesbian cause and forsaking all men. Never mind that you might be a perfectly good life partner – because when I choose someone again, it will be just as much from the heart no matter what gender he or she is. Being bi doesn’t mean you’ll sneak off and be unfaithful with the other gender, though people do seem to think that.

I did have a couple of serious relationships with women in college, before I got married. None of them worked out, for various reasons. The first girl who really fell in love with me was only 16. When she decided she wasn’t going to go to college in order to stay where I was going to graduate school, that was the end of that. No matter how painful for her, I could never allow an intelligent young woman to end her career that way. The older woman I fell for turned out to be a closet alcoholic, and after a fair amount of abuse, I picked myself up and walked out of that one. The bi-curious women I fell for were always way more into men than me, which seems to be the main story of the women I’ve met since then.

I always thought that if my marriage ended I’d be interested in being with a woman next. Of course, it didn’t work that way – it’s the person that matters after all. So after a long and committed relationship with a man that I was very much in love with, I now find myself truly single again – and wondering how to even go about meeting women. Finding a good man is hard enough ;)

Or more precisely, how to let someone know I’m interested in her without risking offense and the end of a friendship. There just aren’t a lot of self-identified bi women out there, especially ones that aren’t already partnered. When I get interested in a woman, she’s almost always someone I’ve met through work or some other similar venue – and I have no clue how to start. All my life in that situation, I’ve chickened out. After all, the friendship is important to me, and there’s no reason to openly represent my orientation in that context. Unlike my gay friends who are out, the women around me have no reason to know I might even have an interest.

So I’m interested in hearing from all of you in the know out there – if you’re a straight or bi woman, how would you prefer to be approached? Has this ever happened to you, and how did you feel? If you’ve been the one doing the approaching, how did that go? For my gay and lesbian friends, any advice? (and do keep in mind, this is a family-friendly blog)