self worth?

 The last few days have been interesting, let's say.  I had the pleasure of having the mad-middle son's kids- with parents of course- for a while Sunday.  I had a dentist appt, had to do errands, etc....  I saw some people I haven't in a while.  For the most part its been ok-ish, and I won't even bother to rant about the dental appointment.  You can never be good enough for the dental office, so whatever.  They can stick it.

Anyway, in my quest to let people be who they need to bet, I am failing miserably at being nonjudgmental and accepting.  MISERABLY!! In some ways, I feel bad for one or two of these people, and in others I want to yell at them but I don't.  Which leads to me having a lot of pent up emotions and then the voices in my own head speak up and this is all just one big mess.  I am grateful for the few  who are constants in my life and I pretty much know what to expect, and mostly it is such a relief when your beliefs and theirs pretty much line up on all the important matters.  Wasn't that a fun run-on sentence that I didn't even bother to correct?  

I had a comment get to me though:  You are retired, you don't have any stress in your life.  I understand this was not meant to be mean or nasty, but it reminded me BIG time of breaking my elbows when it was implied I should be grateful I only had compression fractures and not ones with bones sticking out of my skin or crumbled like dust inside my arm. Because is it even really broken if you don't have a cast?? Bite me. 

This of courses coupled with another conversation made me actually feel GUILTY for getting out of teaching/retiring when I did. I am sorry I don't have to bear the unbelievable stresses that teachers now have, and I cannot feel good about not having to deal with it. .........  wait!  I am not at all sorry.  I would have been able to do it, but I am glad that I do not.  I have thought about this off and on for the last 24 hours or so, and so I decided maybe writing it down might help dispel the thought.  

I am so sorry that you can not retire at this time (insert a few names here) but I actually am older than you and frankly put my time in.  I did a lot of things over the last 35/40 years, and having my own room/full time job only happened for 20 of them.  And things stayed constant for a grand total of 7 of those years and then all bets were off.  Anyway, I did my best and I regret only a few things, and speaking up for myself is not a regret ever, and next time I will.

So now I am going to try to go on with my day without having conversations and voices replaying inside my mind ad nauseam. I need to continue with the rehab of my stupid knees, which by the way, got injured when I over exercised a while back , so that sucks.  But on I go- so whatever, at least the rehab is working.

OMG, I realize that it was 6 years ago TODAY that I broke my elbows.  If you want to know about that craziness it is right HERE....   it was ridiculous. 

ok, back to business....  

Rock on you wonderful people