Enough. Just, stop already!

This week I had what should have been a mundane interaction abruptly turn into a time I had to put my foot down.  A piece of mail for a former neighbor arrived in our mailbox.  So I did the neighborly thing and sent a message asking if they wanted it forwarded somewhere else.  Instead of replying with "no," "yes," or simply not responding, their reply was a childish mini-rant about how they didn't want to hear from me because I refuse to accept responsibility for all their emotions.

This is probably a good time to mention this former neighbor and I dated for about a year.  We broke up because we each wanted a different kind of relationship.  Two people wanting different things from a relationship is a very normal and healthy reason to discontinue a relationship.  What wasn't healthy about this particular relationship was how that mismatch in intentions was expressed.

Even though I stated quite clearly and on many occasions that I did not want to build a life with this person, when they said that was fine, they didn't actually mean it.  What they actually meant was "I'll wait until you see the light and change your mind."  In a classic expression of their unresolved toxic-masculinity, they weren't taking no for an answer and attempted to socially engineer their desired outcome in the background.

Unfortunately for both of us, many months passed before I realized what was going on behind the scenes.  I ended it when I figured it out, but not before they had arranged their life around me.  By then they were so disappointed by my non-reciprocation that when I called it quits they placed all the responsibility for their hurt squarely in my hands.

Fortunately for me, I have done enough therapy that I could take responsibility for my participation in our unhealthy dynamic and draw a healthy boundary before taking on the hurt they caused themselves.  Unfortunately for them, they refused to look at themselves and continue to stew in their self-made betrayal soup.  Self-work is hard, so I decided to be understanding and give them space to work through their feelings.

This week when I read that text message chock full of the same old bullshit I realized my courtesy had only functioned as accommodation.  They are clearly making no progress toward accountability for their own experience and I officially hit my limit.  By now we have been broken-up much longer than the amount of time we dated.  Enough is enough.

So I told them to stop already.

Something I wish I could also say to all the people who have more than enough money to meet their financial needs but choose to complain about having to participate in funding the society they live in and benefit from.  I sat through a tax law update training session that amounted to merely an hour of anti-tax-pro-big-business propaganda.  The out-of-state presenter wasted an hour of my life questioning whether Portland really needed to create a new tax to fund a solution to our un-housed crisis.

The tax she railed against was passed in 2020 by nearly two-thirds of voters.  It collects 1% of the profits from businesses that bring in more than $5million of revenue.  It also collects 1% of taxable income from individuals who make more than $125,000 (or $200,000 for joint filers).  So, did Portland really need this tax on high-ish earning individuals and businesses to support the unhoused?  Yes.  Yes, we really did.

We as a collective metropolitan community have some collective expenses.  That means we need to raise collective funds.  Not from the people who use the services because if they could afford it they wouldn’t need the services.  We need to raise these collective funds from the people who have the money.  Most especially from the people who currently horde the money (Jeff Besozes of the world, I'm looking at you).

The businesses subject to this tax are going to be fine.  The high-earning humans subject to this tax are going to be fine.  Those individuals are also going to be fine paying the additional 1% to fund the preschool for all initiative.  And their minute contributions will get a lot of other people much closer to fine.  More folks will have stable housing, which leads to stability in all other areas of life.  More children will have access to early education, which leads to greater opportunity for the rest of their lives.  Society needs these people to succeed and have stability.

So please, stop with the pushback.  You. Will. Be. Fine.

This attitude is similarly rampant among folks who protest mask mandates or vaccine requirements or spread false news.  I see it in the people working to restrict access to abortion services and voting.  There are so many people living incredibly privileged lives who seem unable to stop themselves from telling other people what they should be doing with theirs.  Especially people who are less fortunate than they are, despite making no effort to understand their (often tragic) circumstances.

Maybe it’s the stress of rigidly controlling themselves.  They try so hard to put the world into a box it plainly does not fit in, all the while denying much of the actual reality all around them.  I guess all that unresolved cognitive dissonance becomes overwhelmingly stressful.  And because our society does not teach people how to healthfully manage stress or deal with big emotions, they try to stress-control everything around them.

Just like the health care facility in Appleton, WI currently trying to stop several employees from starting work at another health care facility.  Rather than consider what it did as an employer to cause 7 of it's highly valuable employees to leave, they filed a lawsuit claiming the employees were "poached" and trying to use the court system to make them stay.  Apparently the soon-to-be former employer even had the opportunity to present counter-offers to these employees, but declined that opportunity to persuade them to stay.  Small wonder those folks are headed to (what I hope) are greener employment pastures.
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It's everywhere.  And I'm sick of it.  I think a lot of folks are sick of it.

People are literally gathering to scream into the void in an attempt to express some of the frustration and exhaustion bubbling up inside them.  Good.  I say go for it.  Scream, flail, hit a pillow with a tennis racket like my sister used to do when we were kids.  Have an all-out adult tantrum.  It's a perfectly reasonable response to the current state of the world.

Also, consider screaming at some of the people who are not doing everything within their power to make things better for the rest of us.  We have all the technology and ingenuity required to remake society in an environmentally sustainable way, but we have not yet done it.  There is more than enough wealth in this country to house and feed and educate every single person who lives here.  But we are not doing it.

So, to everyone not doing your part to make the world a more equitable, more sustainable, healthier place.  Please.  Please.  Stop.  Staaaaaahp already.  Stop playing the victim and start looking at yourself.  Get your shot.  Wear your mask.  Pay your damn taxes.  Learn what consent is and how it works.  Let other people be whoever they are and love whoever they love.  Enough is enough.

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Information and Inspiration

• Metro: Supportive housing services: Addressing homelessness in greater Portland
• Inequality.org: Portlandia Votes to Tax the Rich to Pay for Universal Pre-K
• Politico: We Found the One Group of Americans Who Are Most Likely to Spread Fake News
• BBC: The Food Chain: How not to feed a dog
• Post Crescent: What to know about the battle over Fox Valley health care workers now playing out in court
• wbur: Screaming their heads off, moms let it all out at Charlestown High​