saying no

When You Get Squashed

Happy 2019!  Is it fabulous so far?  Don’t let the weather color your answer – it is January, after all, and January must be true to itself.  As a landscaper friend of mine once told me, “How do you expect all those beautiful things to emerge in the spring if they don’t die back in the cold of winter?”

In the spirit of the sharp, clear cold winter days, let’s cut right to the chase.  I have been a bit absent here.  No, actually, I have been a lot absent here.  In truth, 2018 squashed me like a smooth drum roller.  There is no other way to explain what happened last year, and the only chance of making the situation better is to be honest about it.  I was Squashed with a capital S. I played chicken with 2018, and it won.  It laughed in my face and spat on my crumpled, broken body.  If I weren’t so terribly Irish and stubborn, I would be sitting on a frozen riverbank right now, trying to decide if frostbite really was a bad thing.

The source of the squashing was not one thing, so it was not easy to identify the problem, formulate a solution, and put a plan into action.  I tried repeatedly to retaliate with engineering ninja skills (evaluate, formulate, execute), but there were just too many aggressors.  Heavy Workload was the engine on a train that included Exhausting Travel, Bottomless Charity Causes, Family Drama, and a long line of other heavy cars that ran me over as I was tied to the tracks. 

Have you seen this old cartoon?  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1hac6w  My brothers and I used to watch this after school when they showed ancient cartoons in reruns.  Yes, this was me in 2018.  I got the dog plasma.  I spent the last few months of the year scratching for fleas and barking at cars.  It wasn’t pretty.

As the year drew to a close, I mentioned to one of my close friends that I was about to lose my mind.  (About to?  Who was I kidding? I exaggerated my real level of sanity because I didn’t want her to have me committed).  But this was the point where my little saga took a turn for the better.

What do people usually do when you tell them that you’re overwhelmed?  You know the answer to this.  It’s giving me hives just thinking about it.  The standard answer is, “You just need to learn to say no.”  Just like that.  Oversimplification, table for one?  Sweeping Generalization, come on in!  Seriously – how many times a week do you hear this?  People of all intelligence levels say it, as well as friends and family of all intimacy degrees.

How ludicrous is this statement?  (You can’t hear me, but I just shouted that).  To tell a person that the solution to her complex problems is just to “learn to say no” is to imply that she is stupid and that her problems are simple.  Think about it – the person who is overwhelmed is miserable.  Let’s assume she is moderately intelligent and of at least average emotional maturity.  If “just saying no” were the answer, WOULDN’T SHE BE DOING THAT?!  Of course she would.  But she’s not, because the situation is NOT that simple.

In truth, most people’s lives are complex and contain multi-layered problems.  The “solutions” to those problems often have far-reaching and sometimes hard to predict ramifications.  When you tell someone that she should just say no (or give her some other simple answer), you are implying that she isn’t very bright and hasn’t really tried to figure out solutions.  It’s insulting, so just stop it if you have indulged in this behavior.

Your friend whose brother constantly parks himself on her couch and asks her for money?  She’s exhausted from supporting him and bailing him out of constant scrapes and bad business decisions.  She’s worn out and broke, and he just showed up again.  So you say, “Hon, you just need to learn to tell him no.”

What you don’t know is that her brother has three kids and their mother is just as irresponsible as your friend’s brother.  The only chance these kids have to receive food and warm clothes is from their aunt.  She loves them dearly and would never let them go without, so she keeps giving their dad money.  In addition, she can’t stand the idea of such young kids being disillusioned by their dad, so she tries hard to gloss over his mistakes.  She feels like someone needs to try to give them something of a childhood.

So….now where are you on that “just say no” platitude?  It wasn’t as cut and dried as you thought, was it?

People like to think they can just reach in and solve your problems, and they’re doing you a big favor by doing so.  I’m told all the time “You just need to hire some people” because I have such a heavy workload.  Really?  What kind of people?  What exactly do I do all day – do you know?  Are there people out there who can do exactly that?  Is it more economical for me to train new people or to suck it up for a short time until some projects taper off?  Do you see my face in the mirror in the morning?  If not, then you don’t know the answers to those questions.

Back to my saga….when I said that I was overwhelmed and teetering on the brink of spontaneous combustion, my friend just listened for a while.  Not listening as in, “I feel your pain,” or “I’m validating your feelings,” (ugh) but actually listening to the situation as if it were a problem at work.  A few weeks later, she had planned to come over and hang out one evening, and I got this text: “We’ll need a whiteboard or a big notebook.  I’ve been thinking about your situation, and I have some ideas.”

I will not lie – I cried.  Yes, we have established here that I cry at the drop of a puppy, but the happiness was real.  THIS IS THE KIND OF FRIEND WE ALL NEED TO BE.

When she arrived, we talked about all of the train cars that were barreling across me, and she was sympathetic.  But she didn’t blithely “solve” things in one sentence, and she didn’t just listen.  What she did was to suggest a way to sort through all of the stressors and see if any of them could be reduced by targeting the most critical stressful elements.

The most important part of this story is the fact that my friend’s approach acknowledged that there was no simple solution for my chaos.  She didn’t suggest that the answer was easy and that I was just making life hard for myself.  Her approach implied that she supported my right to make my own choices in life, but that sometimes those choices come with problems.  And she reinforced her status as a real friend by offering to help instead of questioning my choices.

I suggest that in 2019 we all follow my friend’s lead.  We need to support other women and be good friends.  But we need to do this in a way that acknowledges and supports their choices and situations.  Life is neither simple nor easy.  Don’t assume the reason the woman next to you is overwhelmed is because she is spending too much time making perfect meals for her family when they would be happy with peanut butter.  Maybe she is caring for her mother, who has dementia, at the same time she is trying to figure out why a slope is failing in a critical military complex.  Can she solve any of that by just saying no?  Absolutely not.  Is there an easy solution for her issues?  Nope.  Can you be a good friend/colleague/fellow skirt by asking her about it and offering to sort through to find some way to achieve minor improvements?  You bet your pea-picking heart, you can.

Here’s to an un-squashed and vertical 2019.

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