Most days they're tiny, regular things but this week a couple of things have happened that have made me feel really lucky and grateful and I thought it'd be nice to share them here.
To start, here's a lesson about just being honest.
In college I wasn't so great and one time I skipped a psychology class that was going to be a mock exam. The tutor took me out during the next class to ask why I hadn't come to this test and I just told her the truth, I hadn't studied for it and didn't see the point in just sitting there for an hour not being able to write the essay anyway.
I think prior to this I would have had an instinctive reaction to make something up, just make up an excuse in an attempt to not get in trouble. For all the lessons we're taught about honesty when we're little I think this "just try and get away with it" mentality is actually more prevalent in what we learn from society around us and especially as a teenager you don't want an adult to tell you off, you want to get away with stuff.
But guess what? She appreciated the honesty. She obviously explained to me that I was being kinda stupid and I wasn't making the right choices but the fact that I was honest about it meant we could just have a conversation with no one getting angry and defensive. It was much more constructive and I think about it a lot.
Allowing yourself that moment of honest vulnerability can feel like something you shouldn't do, power moves and tricking people to get what you want is often celebrated but it's not healthy for you as an individual or good for us as a whole.
Back to this week, I had two instances this week where people wanted me to phone them. One for some invoice/payment info and one for an account being hacked. After the anxious gremlin in my head told me to abandon getting paid and to just let the account be lost forever I remembered my little honesty lesson from college and reminded myself to not be controlled by the anxiety gremlin and I emailed both of these people and just explained that I have really bad phone anxiety and I was hoping the issues could be resolved in other ways and both of them said it was fine.
I love to be unashamedly honest. It feels so good to just tell the truth and I think more often than not people respond well to it. It isn't just some other trick to get what you want, I fully expected these people to be like "nah, you need to phone" but at least we'd have all been on the same page. And as awful as people can be I think that's learned behaviour and at our core we naturally want to help each other.
The other, more massive, more brilliant thing that happened this week is about Tank's face. Last week we noticed a lump on his cheek, under his ear and we took him to the vet and she said it might be an ear infection so he had some antibiotics and to come back in a week for a check up. After a week the lump was still there. It had changed, I think there was an ear infection but also there's a lump. So we took him in for a check up and it didn't look good. We were told about biopsies and surgery and how it's dangerous and a bad location for nerves and rats have a high risk under anaesthetic and we came home feeling pretty shit and upset. We talked over all the options and decided to have the biopsy, at least we could try and find out what it was.
We took Tank into the vet at 8.30am the next day and left him there to have the procedure, we've never come home without one of the rats before and it was horrible. We were expecting him to have to be put to sleep to have the biopsy done, a needle into the lump to take a sample, and we'd be phoned about lunchtime when he was ready to come home. Lunchtime came and pretty much went and early afternoon we got a phone call.
He was fine! He was a really good boy and hadn't needed the general anaesthetic, he just sat there being a good boy AND the lump wasn't a tumour at all, it's just a cyst! The relief was incredible. There's no tumour, he's just a beautiful gross cyst face boy! We had to wait another three hours before we could go and pick him up (which was torturous) just because the nurse had to discharge him to us and they were out on calls and we went in and got him and it was amazing and the best feeling and I just feel so lucky. He doesn't even need a check up, we just will keep an eye on it. He didn't need the general anaesthetic and it's just a cyst!
Having to deal with Tank was really difficult and having these phone call requests coming in at the same time was really stressful but being able to stop and think "maybe I can just ask them about it" rather than panicking and feeling all "woe is me" turned it all around and made it go much smoother and I'm really grateful. I'm grateful to myself for trying, to the people for not making me phone them and mostly for Tank's beautiful, gross face being gross not deadly ^-^
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