Awkward Encounters of a ‘Yes’ Woman.

There was once a time when I would have described myself as quite an assertive person, but as I have gotten older I have found myself engaging in more and more awkward situations simply because I can’t bare to tell the other person what I’m really thinking, or utter the word ‘No’.

My friends have always laughed at how I am that girl. You know, the one who finds themselves trapped in the toilet line listening to strangers as they confess their deep, dark secrets to me; or the one who agrees to make a distant friend’s multi-layered christening cake two days before the event, even though I have two children, am pregnant and am not a professional cake maker.

I don’t mind my friends laughing because on the whole I think having a ‘yes’ personality is ok if it’s driven by a desire to please those you love, but for me the inability to say ‘no’ extends way past my dear friends and family and frequently encompasses the requests of random strangers, complete weirdo’s, and sometimes even just total jerks. In the last few weeks I have realised that my tendency to bend over backwards to avoid awkward conversations has gotten out of hand. I have moved beyond polite concern for others feelings, to the point that I find myself agreeing to do completely absurd things all in the name of making the other person feel normal and at ease. It’s ridiculous!

Take two weeks ago when my husband booked me in for a last minute massage to relieve some pregnancy back pain at a new massage place in town. I arrived to a tin shed like operation to find my masseuse dressed like a gypsy. On sighting my pregnant belly, she promptly shut her eyes, held my bump in her hands and started humming “Ohhhhmmm, Ohhhhmmm,’ Ohhhmmm.” After an what seemed like an age, she finally opened her eyes and smiled at me, “Sorry, I am just getting a very strong message from the baby; he is telling me he wants you to name him Brian”. Of course like any rational person I immediately thought, Seriously? My tiny, sweet newborn WANTS to be called Brian?  But did I say that? No. Partly, I kept quiet because I wanted her to fix my back, but overwhelmingly it was because I didn’t want to make a scene or offend the name she obviously thought was nice.

Once inside the massage ‘shed’, Sondra, asked me if it was ok if she practiced some alternate mind based therapies on me at the same time as conducting the massage. She wanted to do this because it would increase my chance of ‘total healing’. Of course I said yes. I also said yes when my gypsy healer told me that it was ‘pivotal’ to her treatment that I be completely naked, “Even undies?” I asked. “Totally stripped is best for healing,” she said.

For the next hour and fifteen minutes I lay naked as Sondra intermittently rubbed my body for a minute and then abruptly stopped to hum over a ‘trouble spot’, “Ohmmm, Ohmmm,” she chorused until finally she withdrew the pain from my body drawing it into herself, which then allowed her to process and identify the cause of the pain. “Your back pain stems from a trauma that happened to you when you were about two, it could be from this life or your last one. I need you to let that trauma go now, ok?”

I really wanted to tell her that the pain in my back had already been diagnosed by both a physio and a chiropractor as pregnancy related, but she was so in the moment that I didn’t have the heart and besides she very swiftly moved on to other trauma sites in my body. It seemed unnecessarily rude to interrupt her with specialist facts.

At one point near the end of my time, Sondra hovered over my shoulder and said, “The pain you experience here is because you don’t speak out when you are not happy with the way things are in life, you are literally carrying this burden in your shoulder muscles. I want you to commit right now to being more vocal about your feelings, ok?” She was basically daring me to say, Ok how about you stop psychoanalyzing me and all my past lives and get on with the massage, but instead I just smiled into the massage table at how utterly ridiculous I am and said, “Ok”.

The very next day I found myself being approached by a woman, who I had met a few times in passing before. Being new to my current town and state, I thought the woman, a fellow Mum, might be trying to strike up a friendship with me. Little did I know she was actually wanting much more than friendship, she actually wanted to be business partners with me! Yes, my new ‘friend’ was hoping to share an amazing business opportunity with me, the chance to buy into a lifetime of financial freedom and career satisfaction all for the small price of a Saturday night meeting and a three hundred dollar joining fee.

Funny right? Yeah, it would be if it wasn’t my fifth (yes 5th!) joint business venture approach AKA pyramid scheme “opportunity” in only a twelve month period! Tallying up the hours I have now spent sitting through motivational power-points learning how to get rich AND own my own Mercedes/BMW/Time-share apartment whilst barely lifting a finger I realise I have sacrificed at least an hour of time for every year of my life so far. Thirty plus hours being recruited to Pyramid schemes that I will never get back just because I can’t say, ‘No!”

So, with Sondra’s shoulder advice fresh in mind and the desire to never sit through another night learning how to empower myself via the trafficking of miracle anti-ageing creams, this week I am declaring; Enough is enough! I am hereby making a promise to myself: There will be no more dinners with my husband’s ex simply because she asks; I will not attend any more play dates with radical American pro gun lobbyists, when I am strongly opposed to firearms; and there will absolutely be no more removing of my underwear just so gypsy masseuses don’t feel they have pushed the boundaries too far!

Yep, the new me is going to be much firmer! No more saying yes just to make other people happy. In fact I am already practicing ideas for the new assertive me; I’m thinking some bold, stern statements to start out, something like, “Maybe,” and, “I’ll think about it.”

What about you? Do you find yourself in weird situations simply because you can’t say no to people? What’s the oddest situation you have found yourself in?

Sprinkles, Handkerchiefs and Middle Age

This morning I woke up to the sweet caress of my two year old son stroking my face. As his little chubby fingers swirled over my forehead and down my nose, I took a moment to marvel at the pure sweetness of his touch, before opening my eyes, to find his mischievous little green ones centimetres from my face. “Mumma” he whispered “Why do you have so many of these sprinkles all over your face?”

Ha. My little cherub hadn’t been caressing my face out of sheer adoration per se, but more just allowing his fingers to trace over the road map of ‘sprinkles’ that have appeared with ebola like tenacity on my previously smooth face. Each line seems to rapidly develop, fast resembling an overused highway as opposed to the barely visible, off the beaten track paths they started out as, only a few short years ago. The thing is, it isn’t just my son who has noticed the fast multiplying number of  ‘sprinkles’ on my face, I also noticed in a rare moment alone in front of the mirror recently and for the first time in my life I thought, perhaps I’m no spring chicken anymore?

I decided to give myself the benefit of the doubt, but just in case, I started to mentally compile a list of all my ‘mature moments’.

Unfortunately it didn’t take very long for the list to start padding out.

Not long after the wrinkles I encountered a couple of grey hairs. Then, few weeks after that, I parted my hair differently and a couple of grey hairs turned out to be ALOT of grey hairs.  That same week I had my annual check-up with the Optometrist who told me “it would be irresponsible, bordering on reckless if you don’t go straight from here to fill this glasses prescription, you’re practically blind Mrs McBryde!”  Sheesh, who knew twenty two year old Optometrists could be so pushy?!

Then I had to endure something that added years to my youthful status.  A difficult breakup. After years of infidelity (mine), I had continued to live under the same roof as my love of nearly fifteen years, hoping that somehow we might find our way back to each other. But the truth was undeniable, we were living separate lives. My pre-baby shoe collection and I were officially over .

“It isn’t you, ridiculously expensive silver stilettos from London, its me, I swear,  I have been an inattentive and unfaithful owner. I thought it would just be a fling, that I would end it and come back to you, but the fact is I have fallen in love with the boring and practical ballet flat. I know, I know, ballet flats have none of your pizzaz and sparkle and they could never give me calf definition like you did BUT they have loved me through swollen pregnant feet and long games in the park and well……don’t get me wrong we’ve had great times but I think we’ve just grown apart……”

The break up was hard on both of us.

In the end it was actually nothing physical that made me bon voyage my youth title. It was the words searing into my ears and tumbling out of my mouth.

Just this week my husband said “Hun, can you pick me up some handkerchiefs when you’re out today. It’s only the first day of spring and my allergies are already playing up”. Handkerchiefs? I thought the first world evolved to tissues in the 1900’s?

And then yesterday my best friend and I had a twenty minute conversation about how the agitators in her washing machine isn’t working “Its so annoying it isn’t distributing the powder equally so when I hang it out there are powdery clumps all over the clean clothes!” This topic alone would probably have been enough to close the case on my middle age membership, but then to really hammer the point home I retorted “I know and what about all this rain? Its ridiculous,  it takes two days to dry anything, its like mother nature is conspiring against us!”

The case was mounting.

Finally, I had to concede that the ship of my youth had not only set sail but had actually anchored itself to the port of my past when I heard myself say the following three comments all in the one afternoon.

“Don’t be wasteful, there are starving children in Africa who would love to eat this food”

“If the wind changes your face will freeze like that”  

“Well John, the proof is in the pudding”

Yep. I think its safe to say that the ‘sprinkles’ might just be the icing on the cake.

What are some of the things you’ve said or done lately that make you feel old?