The Game Continues...

I now know first hand how passive-aggressive Seattleites can be (apparently they are famous for it!)

My housemates are not very good at subtlety...

Sometime early December, I found a torn scrap of paper with a web address scrawled on it, on my desk blotter pad... the address turned out to be a website that would help you/me get your/my mess in order!

I got up this morning to find a bumper sticker placed on my desk. 

It quotes the Dalai Lama - "My religion is kindness"...

 

Kindness has many faces - I guess they don't like the face I am wearing in this situation...

Responses from my Facebook friends:

            TP: whoa! Passive aggressive much?

            JT: Maybe they meant it regarding your kindnesses!
           
            CF: since when is placing a lock box on a thermostat considered "kindness"?
        
            TP: When my husband and I first lived together, we were living with another couple. And the wife would leave me notes all over the house. Thank Maude we got through that and now we're the best of friends, but srsly, passive-aggressive roommates are the WORST. You can't feel comfortable in your space because you're always wondering what p-a note they're going to leave behind next. Frustrating.
          
            Sahila ChangeBringer:  We agreed at the end of our row about the lockbox-thermostat issue that Connor and I would move out ASAP and that we would stay out of each others' way... I have been doing my best to do that - I avoid interaction, I clean up after ourselves and just ourselves, I mind my own business.... now the "I'm sick with cancer" card is being played... I empathise with my housemate - I know what that fear feels like though I didn't have to do chemo - and I have things I could share with her to help her on this journey... but there is no opening for that... and I am not going to enable her family in their denial nor am I going to take over some of their responsibilities in this... my responsibility is to Connor and to make the next step in our own path materialise.
         
            Sahila ChangeBringer: @JT - no, they are not talking about my kindnesses!!!! They don't feel I am being kind enough...

I am kinda ashamed to say (no, not really ashamed!) that I put the bumper sticker back on my housemates' computer keyboard, but it now has some other words on it...

I reminded them that actions (lock boxes) speak louder than words and that perhaps people in glass houses ought not to throw stones... And I asked if disrespect = kindness?

We are being very childish, I think...

A couple more weeks and we will be out of here...

Yesterday I went to see the house we'll be looking after and met its owner...

Comfortable house, nice owner - a good transitional place that meets our needs while this hand of the game called life plays out...

I think Connor will have some adjusting to do in the new space - which will be hard for him and good for him at the same time - and I'm thinking how I can make that adjustment easier... will try to surround him with as much of what is important to him as possible...

Revenge UPDATE...

At 8.30am, after cuddling my son who had just gotten up and was sitting shivering on my lap, I decided enough was enough...

I was not waiting for some other adult to wake up, so that I could ask them please for the key to unlock the thermostat and raise the temperature from 55F to 68F...

So, I got my small hammer and with one blow smashed the front of the lock box open...

One problem solved - the heater is going and we shall be warm...

What other problems have I initiated with my choice?

What will be the consequence?   What will be the effects of my causing decision?

PS:   My daily tarot card was delivered to my email inbox while I was constructing this post...

It is:

"The Five of Pentacles card suggests that my power today lies in defiance. We are willing to reject the sure thing or accept excommunication to try to make it on our own rather than endure the status quo or submit to conditions that assume we are invisible -- in this, we have nothing to lose. We accept responsibility for the difficulties ahead and do not seek pity for having chosen against the grain. I am empowered by mutual support and my assets are self-worth, hope, and pride." 

Revenge???

So, I'm sitting here, fuming, frustrated, fed-up and freezing, wondering what there is I can do to deal with this craziness about having the thermostat locked away inside a plastic box, so I can't warm the house beyond what my housemates have decided is OK...

And really, there is not much that I can, in honour, do...

I can smash the lock box and turn up the thermostat - am thinking about it, but then we get into the possibility that they'll match violence with violence, either against me or our stuff, and/or that they'll call the police...

I can steal or damage their property, hoping it will give me leverage to get them to unlock the thermostat so I can be warm... same risks...

I can rant and rave and throw things... makes me look crazy

I can just give in...

It was the same when my housemates moved my possessions down into the garage and put all their art work on the walls, leaving no space for mine...

I could have hauled all my stuff back up the stairs...

I could have taken their art work down...

I could have put mine up...

I could have left theirs up, and filled every last square inch of wall space with mine, regardless of the aesthetics of that...

Gandhi said: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"...

And what's that truism about two wrongs not making a right?

None of these options could be implemented without me seeming to be vindictive, without adding to the energetics of abuse, disrespect, without escalating this battle for power and control...

And yet, there is no denying I have a right to be warm and comfortable in the space I pay for us to live in, using utilities I have already paid for, just as Connor and I have the right to make our surroundings feel like our home too...

And in all of this, Connor is watching to see how to handle conflict in a healthy manner...

I've been playing a game called Balance on Bejewelled, where you have to collect equal numbers of red and blue gems, all the time keeping two tubes balanced so one doesn't reach the bottom before the other.

I've come to understand, in the last few weeks, that this is what life is about - keeping the balance...

In this world of duality and paradox, there are two driving forces - love and fear, expansion and contraction... and it's not a case of either/or, it's a case of and/also...

They don't necessarily have a qualitative value attached to them (we humans might assign them values, but Life itself does not).   They are not good and evil, positive and negative, black and white... they just are... and harmony exists when they are in balance...

So for me, the object of living well is to maintain balance...

And, if my housemates' action is symbolised by a red gem, for example... to stay in balance, harmony, I have to put forward a blue gem... putting forward another red gem (an act of revenge, of power and control, of abuse) will create imbalance and disharmony... 

My question to myself is - what will a blue gem action or state of mind/attitude look like?

 

How can I solve this problem, stay in integrity and not become a victim?   I can be compassionate, I can be understanding, I can be forgiving.... but... I'm still bloody cold sitting at 55F inside my own home in the middle of a Seattle winter!