When Uncle John had explained it to me, I thought he was crazy and told him so. I’ve always been a romantic at heart and felt that to be happy, I would need someone in my life. I pointed to how happy my parents were. He’s laughed at my idealism many times, and every time, he said that I would understand once I gained some life experience. I hated it when he did stuff like that. What he did, though, was give me the bread crumbs to follow, a path to figure it out when I needed to. It might not have made sense then, but I started to see what he had tried to tell me.
Part of being in control of your happiness was deciding how to react to something when it happened. Uncle John had given me a real-life example. We’d gone to town and come back to find that the back window of his truck had been busted out. We found a rock in the passenger seat. I was pissed; I couldn’t believe anyone would do something like that. He didn’t seem fazed, so I asked him about it. He told me it was a waste of energy to go postal and discover the evildoer and exact justice. I hated it when he used my words against me. He said he had insurance and would get the window fixed. At the time, I couldn’t believe his attitude.
This morning, I had a choice to make. I got to decide whether my life was going to be ruined by Brook’s declaration that she needed to think about continuing our relationship.
Knowing that it was my choice was empowering. It removed that twisty sensation I’d had in my gut that made me feel like I wasn’t in control. Being who I was, that wasn’t good. For me, it was like Tami knowing I had a secret and wouldn’t tell her. I had a take-charge personality that would slowly self-destruct if I thought I wasn’t in charge.
The other key teaching that Uncle John had imparted to me that applied to this situation was the concept of making people wrong. It was natural to want to be right. Anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. It would be too easy for me to start building the case that Brook was wrong in how she was handling this. Believe me, I’d railed against her on the car ride home last night. It was because of that I hadn’t gone to her and tried to work things out. In the light of day, that was probably for the best.
My dad had taught me that you praise in public and chastise in private. He took it a step further and said that one of the hardest lessons he’d learned was that when something goes wrong, what mattered was how you handled it. He said you could go on the defensive and point out what everyone else had done for the problem to occur. Or, you could forget about all that for now and fix it.
He had put what my uncle had told me into a business example. It was every bit as valid in my personal life. Was I going to point out how Brook was wrong and how we could make everything right if she would just work with me on this? That only reminded me of how quickly I could travel down that rabbit hole and spend days tearing myself up about what Brook had done wrong.
I had to answer two questions honestly. The first was, was it worth all the energy? And the second was, how would Brook react to my approach? The second was probably the easier one to riddle out. No one, especially a teenage girl, ever wants to hear that they’re wrong. If anyone doesn’t believe that, all they have to do is tell a girl exactly that. I would bet that if I took that path, it was much more likely that she would dump me when I made a jerk of myself.
The first question’s answer was equally easy. If my biggest problem was that I didn’t have enough time to do what Brook wanted to do, when would I find time to worry about this? Don’t get me wrong, Brook was worth whatever it took to keep her in my life. If I knew what she wanted, I would move heaven and earth to make it happen. What I didn’t need to do was obsess about the outcome right now. I had to dial it back and show her I would support whatever decision she made. In the grand scheme of things, this would be merely a blip in my life a couple of years from now. I would ultimately be okay, even if she decided to leave me. I’d been single before, and I would bet big money I would be single in the future.
When Duke and I made it back to our block, I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to do. My only certainty was that, no matter what, I wanted her to be my friend. With that in mind, I started to formulate how I wanted this to work out in the end.
I let Duke in the house to go get his morning loving. I found Precious sprawled out on my pillow, sound asleep. That poor cat was about to pop. My best guess was that we would be seeing a litter of kittens by this time next week.
