SYTB 12: Lights Camera ACTION!

Boundary work IRT for the live studio audience.

“I don’t know why I’m frightened. I know my around here: the carboard trees, the painted scenes, the sound here. Yes, a world to rediscover, but I’m not in any hurry-And, I need. a. moment…

The whispered conversations in overcrowded hallways, the atmosphere as thrilling here as always. Feel the early morning madness! Feel the magic in the making! Why, everything’s as if, we never said ‘goodbye.’”

~“As If We Never Said ‘Goodbye’” from Sunset Boulevard, the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber

The actress in Sunset Boulevard has aged and returns to the theater. Although she has so much wisdom and experience, stepping out into the spotlight, she feels the same energy she felt on her very first time. She’s nervous. Her hands are trembling. Does she still have what it takes to perform? Something in her whispers… “yes,” and she is filled with exhilaration!

Today, I am going to take you through a very real scenario for me. In it, I am going to demonstrate as many of the practices I have taught you so far about boundaries as I can in real time. This will be a combination of a case study and a culmination if you will of everything you have learned which will even include a little foreshadowing and homework assignment for our next lesson tomorrow.

Today, I’m taking you behind the scenes to see the inner workings of how everything I have taught you so far can be put to practice through a real, present experience of mine and in real time. This is going way beyond HBO’s “Behind The Scenes.” You’re not just seeing a few actors and a director screwing off when the cameras stop rolling. You’re gonna see the script writers, the scaffolding structures, the budgeting department, the frustrating rewrites, back stories, getting into character and massive production pivots.

Are you ready? Yes, of course, you are. Let’s dive right in.

Scene Set-Up

I found out this week that the property owner of the house we are living in is coming up on the end of his agreement with the property management company. Our lease is valid until the end of July. However, the arrangement between the property management company and the homeowner is up for renewal in April. The owner has informed the property management company that he will not renew the contract with them. He has also told them that he intends to kick us off the property on the spot. We have never been late with a payment. We have lived up to all the lease terms. We are very clean tenants. We gave him first and last month’s rent as a security deposit moving in. When we move we need that money to go elsewhere. We don’t believe he intends to return our deposit.

Back Story

When we signed the contract to renew our lease last summer, real estate values had skyrocketed. I was concerned at the time the management was going to try to jack up the rent excessively or just not offer to renew our lease at all.

Through a series of accidents, perhaps made by the property management company, the leasing company forgot to negotiate with the owner two month’s prior to our lease ending about what to do with our lease. At that time, I was getting nervous. I have never rented anywhere that our lease renewal wasn’t secured months prior. It felt very precarious. The property management company looked at us as model tenants, however, and wanted to do everything in their power to keep us renting the house. We have no pets. We scarcely paid a cleaning fee upon leaving our last rental. We cleaned like we’d committed a murder we were covering up in the building. Not one fiber of hair or DNA was left behind.

So it was, that they offered us a lease renewal for only $100 increase a couple weeks prior to renewal. This was not outstanding.

Nonetheless, I asked if it could be lower as we only had a week or so to work out the increase to our budget before the fee started. My standard practice with leases is to at least attempt to negotiate a lower fee. I didn’t see a reason to deviate from my standard. The way I see it is, I always ask. Even if I know I am already getting a great deal, I ask. You never know if someone may say “yes.” It’s not personal. It’s just savvy consumerism. However, with an independent seller or landlord in this case, there are often emotions involved. They have attachment to the item or to the property in this case. In my case, perhaps, asking for a lower rate during skyrocketing real estate prices felt like an insult to the sentimental homeowner.

Not to get too personal, but my husband often gets offended if someone asks for a lowball price on something he’s selling- even in his business. I am constantly reminding him that the reason our family has so much nice stuff is because I have always asked for lower prices. Many times it has worked out for us. The thing is, for me, it’s not personal. It’s just an ask. I would never make someone feel like they needed to justify their “no” to me. I don’t know what constitutes a lowball offer in someone else’s mind. How can I know what their ideas are? I try to be reasonable. I often go about 25%-50% lower than asking and hope that people will counter with even 2% lower. I will take any discount at all if I want the item. I will often take no discount if the item seems already discounted to me. However, I always ask.

What Do You Truly Desire?

Do you guys ever watch “American Pickers”? I don’t know if it’s even on the air anymore. Aaron purchased me an Antique Archeology brand name tee shirt from those guy’s store in Nashville when we were first dating.

After we first moved to Utah, we had all mold damaged furniture which we had dutifully destroyed before moving. I was shopping for pretty much everything that we now own at the time and looking for bargains. When we first moved in, we were sitting on a linoleum floor in our apartment watching TV. We were sleeping on air mattresses. We had nothing.

I walked into a store one day to see what they had on clearance. I immediately realized, this store is way outside my budget. Prices were off my radar, but the clerk saw my “American Pickers” shirt.

He calls out to me, “Great show! I love that show! Doesn’t get better.”

I replied, “Me, too.” Tugging my shirt, “…obviously.” I said, “You wouldn’t happen to have a clearance section?”

He says, “Yes, right over here. What are you looking for?”

I said, “kinda like the show… anything and everything.”

He says, “Well, have a look around, and if you see anything or have any questions call me over.” I looked around for almost 30 minutes, and I found this artsy chair. I figured like everything else, it was way out of my budget, but I called my buddy over.

I said, “How much is this chair? There’s no price on it.”

He says to me, “How much would you offer me?” He wants to play American Pickers with me.

“I’m going to insult you. I am a bargain shopper. I can only tell you what I can afford.”

He says, “go ahead. Shoot!”

I say, “would you sell it to me for $30?”

He looks at the chair and says, “I actually don’t know what the price is for this chair, but how about $75?”

I said, “I can’t spend $75 on a pretty chair. My husband would kill me.” I said, “best I could do is probably $40?”

He says, “$45 and you have a chair.”

We shook on it, just like in the TV show. He gets to the register, looks up the cost of the chair and laughs, “I am going to get my butt reamed for this one.” But he’s still laughing.

I said, “oh, no!” Laughing back.

He says, ‘don’t worry about it. This was the most fun sale I’ve ever had.”

I thanked him graciously before I walked out of the store. I sat in the driveway, backed up to where the service guys load furniture purchases into the vehicles. It was raining, and I couldn’t see anything through my windshield except the grey hue of the sky and raindrops on my windshield. I pulled out my phone and out of curiosity, looked up the chair online as it was being loaded safely into the back of my van. The chair was on clearance for $360!!! If I had been drinking a beverage, I would have spit it out my nose.

Ask for what you truly desire.

It doesn’t technically infringe on anyone’s boundaries to ask a question. If they feel it does, they’ll let you know. You won’t want to do business with them. They may also not see it as an infringement and play along anyway. Or not. Maybe, they just say, “that’s too low.” Fine. But ASK!

Recast Your Characters

All this to say, I asked with our lease. I am not a mind reader. I didn’t speak to our home owner. I just talked to the leasing company. They seemed unphased by the question. However, when they mentioned it to the homeowner, it may have phased him. He might be like my husband and take low offers personally.

The owner had to put a lot of money in repairs into the place since we moved in. I’m not sure if it became a net loss for him to have us in his house.

None of it was our fault.

He and his father for years seem to have been doing their own wiring and maintenance. While the place cosmetically looked wonderful, the dishwasher was rigged wrong and on Thanksgiving night, it came apart and flooded almost the entire upstairs and the water poured through the ceiling and into the basement. Some of the damages from that were never addressed. I’m certain the emergency repair call on a holiday was not inexpensive. The yard doesn’t drain properly and heavy rains have flooded the basement on multiple occasions. We shop vacuumed the water up ourselves as it was only on the concrete, but sending someone out to check on why it is flooding costs money. The initial AC unit was really old and way too small for the size of the property. It was also plumbed and installed improperly. It went out, technically, just blew air while we were in the hottest part of last summer. I, with my perimenopause symptoms, nearly melted waiting for it to get approved to be fixed. It took nearly three days for the guy to install the new unit. During that time, we had no air circulation at all. It was scorching outside, well into the 100’s. It was close to 90 degrees inside the house. I was miserable. We decided to take the family to a Best Western hotel at the Wyoming state line with good air conditioning and a pool to keep the family cool. That was on our own dime. So, that cost us all.

Long story, I don’t know how the owner felt about my ask.

What I do know is that we had a falling out with our neighbor, and a couple days later, the owner, who had always been nice to us, wanted us gone. This was right after we’d renewed our lease for a $100 more per month for a full year. We had just inherited some money, and had we not renewed at that time, we could have used our inheritance as a down payment and bought something. Which brings me to now. Months later, inheritance all but spent, our lease secured until early August, and I find out that the owner is severing his relationship with the property managers and has intentions to throw us out on the spot at the beginning or end of April. As I said before, I have no idea if he intends to return our $3200 security deposit in the process.

So, boundaries in practice… Of course, we will go to small claims court if he doesn’t offer us the opportunity to meet his demands for whatever he feels needs cleaned or repaired upon eviction and refuses to give us our deposit back. That’s the defensive aspect. But, as they say in sports, “the best defense is a good offense.”

By offense, I don’t mean going after someone. I mean advancing toward your goals. The thing is, if you are looking at boundaries as a defensive game, you are playing to not lose what you have. It doesn’t mean you’ll win. You may play perfect defense and never score. Your best opportunity to advance toward your goals is to be taking the offensive position, staying focused on the prize. The prize in this case is you and me, living the life of our dreams, honoring ourselves and feeling whole, healthy and fulfilled.

So the bottom line to saying “yes” to boundaries is focusing on YOU, what you want advancing forward and the best way to get it is to get right with yourself. Fire the rest of the cast if you have to. Stop giving them any resources or attention. Your production can’t get by without you.

Getting Into Character

Time to do a body scan and assess my honest feelings about the situation.

My immediate feelings about losing the property manager knowing the owner suddenly despises us (conveyed via the management company in diplomatic terms) had me feeling vulnerable. My shield of protection and sensibility in our property manager seemed to be stripped away. I am now going to be directly dealing with someone whom the property management company refers to as “sentimental” toward the property. I am going to be dealing with an emotional and irrational person. It was as if I really wanted hardwood floors in my own home. The way I found out I was getting it was that someone pulled the rug and floor out from under me. Although, I feel confident I will land on the hardwood floors of my deepest desires, I’m pretty sure the rug would be a softer landing. It’s a crash course. Falling on your ass on hard floors isn’t comfortable. I don’t know how long I’ll be suspended before I hit the ground. That’s all scary. I needed to feel those feelings.

However, my first instinct was to go into metaphysical, emotional bypass. I have been in the metaphysical, new agey, self-help circles reading books by Gary Zukav, Louise Hay, Norman Vincent Peele, Eckhart Tolle and Wayne Dyer since I was a teenager. I wanted to deny validity to those scared feelings and exclusively acknowledge the best possible outcome. One part of that sentence I just shared is good. There is nothing wrong with focusing on the positive. It’s been a few days since I received the news. I have been living in denial of my fear almost the entire time. Well, it’s terror really. It’s also overwhelm. These are big, big feelings. Awe and wonder are also big feelings with a somewhat similar energetic resonance. You might laugh at this. I have been telling myself for three days that I can interpret my horrible feelings as awe and wonder, and I can transmute everything I am feeling to faith, positivity and light.

Recast myself

Question: Am I being fair to myself?

If someone else did something really bad to me and I was hurt, how would I feel if someone I loved dearly and trusted implicitly, someone I depended on for support in hard times told me callously, not to feel hurt? What if they told me my feelings weren’t valid? What if they told me, I should just feel wonderful? What if they made me feel guilty and small for not looking on the bright side and all the infinite possibilities? What if they told me feeling my feelings could lead to negative outcomes and destruction? Ah-HA! It’s not just denying my feelings, it’s also guilt for having the feelings. The net gain in the budget is MORE HARD FEELINGS. I have been unconsciously gaslighting myself.

As a result, I have felt exhausted and restless for the past few days. Is it any wonder?

Resolution after body scan: Feel the real feelings. Write down the real feelings. Validate the real feelings.

Character Cohesion

You might have noticed I am spending an awful lot of time and energy trying to figure out what motivated my home’s owner to start disliking me. I’m trying to figure him out. I am trying to be sympathetic. More character back story is that I live in his parent’s house. His mom was placed in a home for dementia. His dad died of pneumonia in spring of 2020 when we rented the place. I have heard from the neighbors that one of his brothers who may have been living here with his dad also committed suicide at almost the same time as his father’s death. Knowing his mother was in a nursing home during Covid, I have imagined he can’t visit her. She may feel confused, lost or abandoned. His folks left a lot of themselves in and around this house. It’s hard for me to live here and not feel a great reverence for them both. They lived here since the home was built some 70 years ago.

I don’t know the home owner, but everyone in the neighborhood knew his parents and talk to me about them. I feel almost haunted by his parents even though one of them is still alive. I have cast my landlord in this role of someone I feel I have to answer to in a greater way. I feel like I have needed to honor him. The fact is, he’s just a landlord.

To him, I’m just a tenant that’s violating his parent’s memory by staying here. As the property manager paints it, he never really wanted to rent the property. The homeowner himself told me the only reason they didn’t give the house to one of the grandchildren is because they needed the rent to pay for his mom’s nursing home. This whole arrangement is an infringement to this guy. But again, I’m focused on him, his motives, his reasons.

Not only is he just a landlord to me, he’s a dick of a landlord to me, and he’s probably an extortionist and a cheat as far as the law is concerned should he kick us out and try to keep our deposit.

I need to see him as he has been behaving, rather than as I cast him as this dutiful son of this lovely, elderly couple. In my story, I need to see him for who he is playing. He’s a nasty, slumlord. He’s only begrudgingly kept the place up since we moved in. The only reason it was so nice to begin with was because it was his parent’s home. They cared for it. The expenses of owning a home and dealing with the bullshit that comes with home ownership on top of renting a place are what they are. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He has been for at least a year negligent and unappreciative of us as very wonderful tenants. The bottom line is, he doesn’t deserve us.

While I am seeking character cohesion with who he is in my life, I have to acknowledge that if someone doesn’t want to do business with you, it’s probably best if you find someone else to do business with. It’s just like I said with the “American Pickers” story. If someone gets completely offended and bent out of shape because you made a counter offer they didn’t like, especially if they ended up getting what they asked for in the end, and they continue to hold a grudge, that is not someone you want to do business with. It’s not someone you want any relationship with. That’s a grown baby is what it is.

So… it takes some of the sting off this needless wrenching on my part to continue to try to figure out what went wrong, how I must be responsible, what could I do to fix it.

Sometimes a dick is just a dick. You can’t change it. You can’t afford to pay for keeping them around. That leads beautifully into what we learned yesterday.

Take An Audit

What benefit have I gained by bypassing my emotions and focusing on how I can protect myself even though it has not brought me closer to my true goals and ambitions? You’ll recall, we asked this question yesterday. I’m thinking of how I can protect myself. What has that given me? It has shielded me from breaking down while I was in the tail end of long covid symptoms. It kept me positive and calm around the kids. It kept me from hurt feelings and falling into victim mode. I recognize I did it to protect myself because I love myself. It kept me in an excited, expectant and anticipatory “wait and see” energy rather than acting impulsively. I recognize now (while I am auditing my energetic expenditures) that I really wanted to be excited about the prospect of moving and embrace my core value this year of adventure. I am grateful to my ego for choosing the high road and even for emotionally bypassing the hard feelings. I totally get how me breaking the bad news to my husband could have been worse if I was falling apart. I really love myself for having the power of positive thinking as my default defense mechanism. It could be a million worse defaults. I even think I am very sweet and lucky to want to help myself in this way.

AND…

It’s time to ask the next question in the audit.

What’s This Production Costing Me?

What do I have to lose if I don’t change the way I handle my boundaries? What happens if I keep playing defense and don’t get into offensive mode? This one is really tricky because my defense mechanism looks like offense, doesn’t it? It looks like I am getting into a position of power with my focus on positivity. However, having denied my feelings has cost me in shame, guilt and fatigue. I’ve really gaslighted myself with positivity. I am not truly aligned with positivity, either. If you feel like crap but you are forcing yourself to feel happy, it takes more energy and the net result is manifesting mud. Your energy says manifest fear but your bypass says manifest rainbows. Your colors bleed and you end up with a hot mess experience. To manifest clearly, your heart really needs to be loved. You need alignment of heart and mind. Part of love is acknowledging what you feel, honoring what you feel and telling yourself your feelings are valid. My friend, Dan Millstein, who ran A Course In Miracles Group and worked in Visions For Prisons told me decades ago, “Your forgiveness is hiding behind your fear.” I think true positivity is on the other side of feeling scared. This is just like with Jeremy in Lesson 10, when I hadn’t let myself feel hurt and angry, I couldn’t get over it. I was causing myself physical neck pain from my mental attitude. You know what? I’ve had neck pain for over two days now. I blamed Covid for the glands in my neck swelling causing it. While I am recovering from Covid and have had an array of symptoms, the neck pain only came AFTER the emotional bypass. Can you say “physician heal thyself”?

If I truly want to manifest from a place of power and clarity, I need to deal with how I am feeling first. I don’t know how many of you have kids, but if you have, you know what it’s like to be walking out the door to get somewhere on time and a kid (or both) gets hurt and has a fit. You want to shuffle everyone into the car, but you know, it’s only going to get worse if you don’t take a few minutes to stop, get at eye level with them, acknowledge those big feelings, ask what you can do to help and just be patient with them. As a mom or a dad, you know. The best course of action is to be here now with those big, hurt feelings. Resign yourself to doing this as the priority. Be ready to pivot to this priority so you can eventually win the day. For me, and I know this particular example really mirrors Lesson 10, what I lose by continuing to emotionally bypass is a clear manifestation and self care. I may get to the finish line- but without an arm, without my relationship with myself in tact. I won't feel whole or complete. I have to treat myself to the same love I would give to my toddler, knowing that with me, as an emotionally mature adult, it will not take that long.

I know a lot of you (one person in particular and you’ll know who you are as you read this) know that being happy, gaslighting yourself and overriding hurt feelings is something many of us were taught to do in childhood to allow our parents to move on with their lives without stopping for us. Often, being happy was a defense mechanism to avoid being hit or worse, for having and expressing our hurt feelings so that our parents could get us in the car. We continued to punish ourselves for our feelings into adulthood. Hello!

Ok, it’s not as important to get somewhere as it is to enjoy the ride, the companions and the fellow passengers you share the journey with. The first most important relationship you and I have is with ourselves. We spend more time with us than anyone else will, as my friend and mentor, Melanie Moore said just the other day. If there was any passenger important enough to stop the train for, it’s ourselves. Trust me when I say this, if you don’t acknowledge your feelings you are either on the wrong track or completely off the rails. Metaphors are getting mixed, boys and girls! Then, if you aren’t right with yourself, you can’t be right with anyone else.

How many movies have you watched where a person pretends to be something they aren’t to be happy with someone else? “Runaway Bride,” anyone? Julia Roberts and Richard Gere! It’s a classic. Julia plays Maggie, a girl who is trying so hard in relationship after relationship after relationship to be this chameleon of what she thinks these guys want that she is never right with herself. Maggie doesn’t even know who she is anymore. So all these relationships look great, but she’s not herself. She’s this false persona. With one guy she loves football. With another, she loves horses. With another, she’s a hippy. Her train is going in circles and getting nowhere. She meets a guy (Richard Gere’s character, Ike) she finally recognizes she could really love and who can see her through all her bullshit, but she realizes she can’t be happy with Ike because she hasn’t ever honored herself.

Think about it. How could you ever be sure someone really loves you if you are still uncertain about who you are and you are still playing really small? So, Maggie goes in search of her own dreams. She doesn’t just tinker with her odd lamps as a hobby while playing the town hardware, fix-it girl. She designs them, mass produces them and gets them in stores in New York City. She figures out that the only eggs she likes are benedict. I relate to that as a poached-egg-in-soup-only girl, myself. Maggie LOVES herself. Then and only then, does she know that she can trust what Ike sees in her is lasting.

Ok, so sneak peek lesson of today is to ask yourself, what do I have to lose by carrying on doing what I’ve always done?

We’re going to unpack this even further tomorrow. Stay tuned!

(Update: 20 minutes after acknowledging my fear and anger, my glands in my throat which were causing my neck pain stopped hurting. They’re still slightly swollen, but there is no sharp pain. No pain at all.)