I had an epiphany!
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: The Pit of Despair
Posts: 148
I had an epiphany!
This is long....but you're probably used to that from me by now, so please be patient during my rant, because I learned a couple of lessons! I had one of those crazy busy days today, and was relieved when we finally were done for the day and could sit down for a bit. Here is a small amount of background...
My dear friend lives up the road. She is going through a personal mess of her own lately, which I will not go into. She recently asked me to watch her 8...yup I said 8 (7 are five month old puppies), American Bulldogs for a day while she took care of some things in her house. She told me when she asked that she would come get them that evening...and then promptly asked me to come up and get them, rather than bringing them to me. I said fine, thinking I was helping her. Yes, this is where I should have set some boundaries (I am LEARNING about them, working on me, don't be hard on me here). I have Danes and hunting dogs, I love dogs, but mine are very different from these bulldogs. Anyway I digress. I drove up there in the super cold freezing wind, twice, hauled her dogs down to my house, and their kennels, set them up in my living room, thinking it was for the day. Thinking the kids and I could handle the chaos (on top of the rest of our chaos we have been dealing with) for a day. Boy, was I wrong. HOLY MOLY. I should have KNOWN better. She failed to mention they were all sick. Having liquid diarrhea. Which made mine all get...yep, liquid diarrhea, and hers aren't potty trained. Sigh. She didn't come get them that night. I asked her the next day about dog food since I had gone through an entire bag feeding just hers. And the next day, asked again. She promptly asked me to drive her to the store where she attempted to buy dog food and groceries...only the store refused her check. Turns out her balance was negative. So, nope, no dog food. I was going through a huge bag every other day, that is $25 each bag. One of her dogs actually dug through the bottom of his kennel one night and chewed a hole in the subfloor of my living room, would you believe that? Between the poop, the pee, and that, I was getting pretty pissed, as you can imagine. After two weeks, yep, two, she started saying things like, oh, I should come get the dogs out of your hair. And I would ask if she could bring a bag of dog food on her way home, etc. One day it went from mild outside to 40 mph winds and freezing cold, blowing snow, etc, and she says oh, hey I am thinking about sending the boys down to get the dogs when they get home from school. I was like, you are sending an 11 year old and 14 year old boy to walk 8 big muscly dogs home...half a mile, in this weather?? What she wanted was me to offer to bring them, I thought, but nope, I felt it was her responsibility to retrieve them. I heard nothing more from her the rest of that night. The next day she called and asked to borrow $1500, but did not mention the dogs or picking them up. I was fed up, seriously fed up at this point, and busy, so didn't respond. Three days ago I asked her if she would please come get them, as the kids and I could no longer deal with them, it was just too much. No response. Two days ago, she would text me about the money, but soon as I asked about the dogs she would stop responding. We had some important visitors from overseas coming today, and we were trying to clean the house for their arrival and last night, after her dogs attacked one of mine, I texted her and said, Please come get your dogs, tonight. I need them gone, tonight. Got no response. Then I said, they are fighting, I do not want them here, please, I will be up all night, COME GET YOUR DOGS. I got no response. So then first thing this morning I texted her and said, Are you up? She responds an hour later with Yes. And then.... I am not home right now. This told me she had gotten my other texts the night before and just ignored me. So I said, did you get my texts last night? and I resent them, so she couldn't pretend she had no clue, though she tried, and I again said, I need them gone ASAP. She got pissy, and said, I will be home shortly...and she drove by the house going super fast, like she was mad. Several hours later, she texts me and says she is not set up for them and has no way to get them home, and the kids are all sick with fevers and such. I said that they needed to leave my house today. I felt she was just jerking me around, and I was sick of it, right. She eventually showed up and omg she was MAD as a hornet because I inconveniently expected her to follow through. Jerking the dogs around, shoving them into the back of her truck, saying they smell (duh, she never potty trained them and how could I potty train 8 dogs at once??), saying they smell sick, it was just bad, shooting me dirty looks, etc. Finally, they were all loaded, and right at the same moment my company drives up. She was all rude to them, and me and just drives away without saying thanks or bye even. I turned my focus to our visitors, not even thinking about the whole thing too much. After the visitors left, I finally thought back to what had happened with my friend and her dogs. My 13 year old daughter says that the only way those dogs would have ever left is if I did just exactly what I did, whether it made my friend mad or not, I had to do it that way. And she is right. The kids and I were so mentally exhausted just by the chaos of dealing with her, getting the dogs loaded, etc, it just really struck me. SHE is just another example of a person like my ex...a user, a person with little care or concern for the effects her behavior has on others. There is a point to my rant, please quit reading now if I am boring the daylights out of you! Anyway, so after our company left and I had time to ponder things it hit me, how exhausting it is dealing with her. Every bit of her life is chaos and drama. ALL of it. Husband is an abusive drunk. Kids are a mess. Everyone is always sick. She is always borrowing $300 every week from everyone she knows. Etc. Its EXHAUSTING. And that is how it was with my ex. Everything was always SUCH A BIG DEAL. We could not get through one day without him having some major fit over something big or small. It struck me, the quiet peace in our house, since her pile of dogs is gone, the smell is gone, etc, and the quiet reminded me how I felt after my ex left and drove away. Relief. And suddenly I realized that my entire relationship with him was that. Chaos, drama, and turmoil. It was an upheaval from the moment he entered it, and my peaceful sanctuary of a home I had built with my kids had become an unstable place of uncertainty and unhappiness for all of us. Someone on this forum tonight said that chaos follows some people, I can't remember how it was phrased, but it is right. Maybe its how they respond to life, I dunno, but its like these two people in my life, they are just always in a drama of some sort, like they feed off it somehow, and omg its EXHAUSTING being around them. I realized how much I enjoy not having that crap happening in my life. It hit me, while I have been so sad, so lost, so hurt over my ex, that wow, living this way, our way without him, its so much better. Its back to how it was before he arrived in the picture, and its better. I do NOT enjoy the chaos, and I CHOOSE not to have it, and I CHOOSE to surround myself with peaceful, loving people. And then I got on here and read the thread about boundaries. Its funny that it was on here, because I had just spoken to my mother about that subject tonight. It says "I have a right to be who I am and to harmlessly live my own life regardless of whether others don't like it. I don't have to feel guilty for not behaving as others might want me to or for not giving others what they expect from me." That second part could easily be applied to my friend and her dogs, that whole mess. I watched them, helped her out, and she took advantage of me, and then GOT MAD at me because I didn't continue to let her take advantage of me because I put my foot down. To hell with that. Then the first part, my ex always said he loved how I don't care what other people think, I just am always myself. I do my own thing, I stay true to me and follow my own path, no matter what....and reading that post, it HIT ME, that thing he said he loved so much? That is what he said he loved, but then he tried to stomp it out of me, and in the end, he even accused me of lying about being that way in the first place. WTF??? That one sentence...I have a right to be who I am and to harmlessly live my own life regardless of whether others don't like it. THAT is how I USED to be, before he came into my life and caused chaos and tried to strip if away from/out of me. THAT is how I WILL BE again, soon.
Thanks for reading my rant...I could have just journaled it but I figured maybe someone else might gain a teeny bit of insight somehow.
My dear friend lives up the road. She is going through a personal mess of her own lately, which I will not go into. She recently asked me to watch her 8...yup I said 8 (7 are five month old puppies), American Bulldogs for a day while she took care of some things in her house. She told me when she asked that she would come get them that evening...and then promptly asked me to come up and get them, rather than bringing them to me. I said fine, thinking I was helping her. Yes, this is where I should have set some boundaries (I am LEARNING about them, working on me, don't be hard on me here). I have Danes and hunting dogs, I love dogs, but mine are very different from these bulldogs. Anyway I digress. I drove up there in the super cold freezing wind, twice, hauled her dogs down to my house, and their kennels, set them up in my living room, thinking it was for the day. Thinking the kids and I could handle the chaos (on top of the rest of our chaos we have been dealing with) for a day. Boy, was I wrong. HOLY MOLY. I should have KNOWN better. She failed to mention they were all sick. Having liquid diarrhea. Which made mine all get...yep, liquid diarrhea, and hers aren't potty trained. Sigh. She didn't come get them that night. I asked her the next day about dog food since I had gone through an entire bag feeding just hers. And the next day, asked again. She promptly asked me to drive her to the store where she attempted to buy dog food and groceries...only the store refused her check. Turns out her balance was negative. So, nope, no dog food. I was going through a huge bag every other day, that is $25 each bag. One of her dogs actually dug through the bottom of his kennel one night and chewed a hole in the subfloor of my living room, would you believe that? Between the poop, the pee, and that, I was getting pretty pissed, as you can imagine. After two weeks, yep, two, she started saying things like, oh, I should come get the dogs out of your hair. And I would ask if she could bring a bag of dog food on her way home, etc. One day it went from mild outside to 40 mph winds and freezing cold, blowing snow, etc, and she says oh, hey I am thinking about sending the boys down to get the dogs when they get home from school. I was like, you are sending an 11 year old and 14 year old boy to walk 8 big muscly dogs home...half a mile, in this weather?? What she wanted was me to offer to bring them, I thought, but nope, I felt it was her responsibility to retrieve them. I heard nothing more from her the rest of that night. The next day she called and asked to borrow $1500, but did not mention the dogs or picking them up. I was fed up, seriously fed up at this point, and busy, so didn't respond. Three days ago I asked her if she would please come get them, as the kids and I could no longer deal with them, it was just too much. No response. Two days ago, she would text me about the money, but soon as I asked about the dogs she would stop responding. We had some important visitors from overseas coming today, and we were trying to clean the house for their arrival and last night, after her dogs attacked one of mine, I texted her and said, Please come get your dogs, tonight. I need them gone, tonight. Got no response. Then I said, they are fighting, I do not want them here, please, I will be up all night, COME GET YOUR DOGS. I got no response. So then first thing this morning I texted her and said, Are you up? She responds an hour later with Yes. And then.... I am not home right now. This told me she had gotten my other texts the night before and just ignored me. So I said, did you get my texts last night? and I resent them, so she couldn't pretend she had no clue, though she tried, and I again said, I need them gone ASAP. She got pissy, and said, I will be home shortly...and she drove by the house going super fast, like she was mad. Several hours later, she texts me and says she is not set up for them and has no way to get them home, and the kids are all sick with fevers and such. I said that they needed to leave my house today. I felt she was just jerking me around, and I was sick of it, right. She eventually showed up and omg she was MAD as a hornet because I inconveniently expected her to follow through. Jerking the dogs around, shoving them into the back of her truck, saying they smell (duh, she never potty trained them and how could I potty train 8 dogs at once??), saying they smell sick, it was just bad, shooting me dirty looks, etc. Finally, they were all loaded, and right at the same moment my company drives up. She was all rude to them, and me and just drives away without saying thanks or bye even. I turned my focus to our visitors, not even thinking about the whole thing too much. After the visitors left, I finally thought back to what had happened with my friend and her dogs. My 13 year old daughter says that the only way those dogs would have ever left is if I did just exactly what I did, whether it made my friend mad or not, I had to do it that way. And she is right. The kids and I were so mentally exhausted just by the chaos of dealing with her, getting the dogs loaded, etc, it just really struck me. SHE is just another example of a person like my ex...a user, a person with little care or concern for the effects her behavior has on others. There is a point to my rant, please quit reading now if I am boring the daylights out of you! Anyway, so after our company left and I had time to ponder things it hit me, how exhausting it is dealing with her. Every bit of her life is chaos and drama. ALL of it. Husband is an abusive drunk. Kids are a mess. Everyone is always sick. She is always borrowing $300 every week from everyone she knows. Etc. Its EXHAUSTING. And that is how it was with my ex. Everything was always SUCH A BIG DEAL. We could not get through one day without him having some major fit over something big or small. It struck me, the quiet peace in our house, since her pile of dogs is gone, the smell is gone, etc, and the quiet reminded me how I felt after my ex left and drove away. Relief. And suddenly I realized that my entire relationship with him was that. Chaos, drama, and turmoil. It was an upheaval from the moment he entered it, and my peaceful sanctuary of a home I had built with my kids had become an unstable place of uncertainty and unhappiness for all of us. Someone on this forum tonight said that chaos follows some people, I can't remember how it was phrased, but it is right. Maybe its how they respond to life, I dunno, but its like these two people in my life, they are just always in a drama of some sort, like they feed off it somehow, and omg its EXHAUSTING being around them. I realized how much I enjoy not having that crap happening in my life. It hit me, while I have been so sad, so lost, so hurt over my ex, that wow, living this way, our way without him, its so much better. Its back to how it was before he arrived in the picture, and its better. I do NOT enjoy the chaos, and I CHOOSE not to have it, and I CHOOSE to surround myself with peaceful, loving people. And then I got on here and read the thread about boundaries. Its funny that it was on here, because I had just spoken to my mother about that subject tonight. It says "I have a right to be who I am and to harmlessly live my own life regardless of whether others don't like it. I don't have to feel guilty for not behaving as others might want me to or for not giving others what they expect from me." That second part could easily be applied to my friend and her dogs, that whole mess. I watched them, helped her out, and she took advantage of me, and then GOT MAD at me because I didn't continue to let her take advantage of me because I put my foot down. To hell with that. Then the first part, my ex always said he loved how I don't care what other people think, I just am always myself. I do my own thing, I stay true to me and follow my own path, no matter what....and reading that post, it HIT ME, that thing he said he loved so much? That is what he said he loved, but then he tried to stomp it out of me, and in the end, he even accused me of lying about being that way in the first place. WTF??? That one sentence...I have a right to be who I am and to harmlessly live my own life regardless of whether others don't like it. THAT is how I USED to be, before he came into my life and caused chaos and tried to strip if away from/out of me. THAT is how I WILL BE again, soon.
Thanks for reading my rant...I could have just journaled it but I figured maybe someone else might gain a teeny bit of insight somehow.
Member
Join Date: May 2010
Location: California
Posts: 21
Omg - the point is not the dogs!
Ofelie - yay for you! That is quite an epiphany! Choosing to leave the chaos behind, choosing to focus on you and your kids in spite of the fact that some of the other people in your life only want you to do what is good for them, to choose peace over the madness, to realize you have a right to and deserve to live your life calmly causing no harm to others...yay for you!
Ofelie - yay for you! That is quite an epiphany! Choosing to leave the chaos behind, choosing to focus on you and your kids in spite of the fact that some of the other people in your life only want you to do what is good for them, to choose peace over the madness, to realize you have a right to and deserve to live your life calmly causing no harm to others...yay for you!
Member
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 1,572
Originally Posted by coolchick 
Omg - the point is not the dogs!
Ofelie - yay for you! That is quite an epiphany! Choosing to leave the chaos behind, choosing to focus on you and your kids in spite of the fact that some of the other people in your life only want you to do what is good for them, to choose peace over the madness, to realize you have a right to and deserve to live your life calmly causing no harm to others...yay for you!
Ofelie - yay for you! That is quite an epiphany! Choosing to leave the chaos behind, choosing to focus on you and your kids in spite of the fact that some of the other people in your life only want you to do what is good for them, to choose peace over the madness, to realize you have a right to and deserve to live your life calmly causing no harm to others...yay for you!
Sober since 10th April 2012
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posts: 6,047
Hi Ofelie, I've often seen people who take advantage of others, and it's almost like it does them harm, because their lives are still a mess. You gave this woman a free pass for a month, and instead of using it to make her life better she's gained nothing.
It's obvious we should steer clear of these users, but because we don't have the same mind-set we often don't have the skills to spot them.
It's obvious we should steer clear of these users, but because we don't have the same mind-set we often don't have the skills to spot them.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: nh
Posts: 339
My xabf said to me when were breaking up that "You have nothing to give"...when I told this to another human being that he had said this to me she replied " because he has sucked it all out of you!" Thats what they do! Your are obviously a kind and careing person to have taken on that responsibility for those dogs that long. There is nothing wring with that. Its those who take advantage that have the problem! Glad you had an awakening!
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: The Pit of Despair
Posts: 148
Yes, basically. Don't worry about the dogs, she is working on finding them homes, so she is not keeping them. I raise titled field trial dogs, so I would DEFINITELY have done something if I thought they were in danger of neglect or abuse. They will be ok. You are right, though, she has no business having ANY of the animals she has, and I have let her "keep" chickens and ducks here while she "gets a place set up" and then about 6 months later tells me to just keep them. I could NOT risk doing that with those bulldogs, no matter how cute they were. A person who is $350 in the hole each week and borrowing money from everyone just to make ends meet does not need any animals. Period. I am more worried about her kids and her, but as I keep telling my kids, I have to get my house, my life in order, her life and her chaos are not my job to handle. And her life IS in chaos, and her fit when I gave the dogs back to her tells me the same thing it told me the other day when my ex sent that email saying I am the crazy one who needs help. Not one mention of being sorry or getting help or he knows he has issues, nothing...For pete's sakes, its just bizarre that these people go through life like this. Parasites is what they are. Sucking the life out of everything around them.
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 322
Originally Posted by DoubleBarrel
After she didn't pick up the dogs, you should have contacted a rescue.
That person has no business owning dogs.
That person has no business owning dogs.
And I'm so happy that you saw this! It's amazing what we start to see when the fog starts lifting a little. I had one of those nights last night talking with friends. I'm nowhere near healed, but wow, did I come to some harsh realizations last night.
You deserve better.
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