Unresolved Conflict

I hate it. I hate having something hang over my head. It kicks my anxiety into high gear. My husband, however, can fall asleep no matter what is happening, and so when he is home sometimes his sleeping and peacefulness can calm me.

But he's not home.

And yesterday a child of mine who -- hough thinking she is an adult, is not acting like one at all, though wanting the privileges of being one a few months early -- started a conversation . A conversation by phone that really needs to take about an hour to have because the complexities of her requests and questions are just that deep. But about 3 minutes into the conversation she didn't want to have to "listen to it" and hung up on me. She wanted to finish this conversation by text and I refused, so I have heard nothing. Except that there is another text to come -- I don't know for sure when -- that will start the whole thing up again.

i did a fairly decent job by the time I went to bed of laying the whole thing to rest, having finished talking to Bart late last night online. But I woke up with it churning again.

I was raised in a place where conflict was lovingly brought out into the open and discussed, fairly patiently, by godly people until it was resolved. That's not to say I was never rude or mouthy, but I loved and respected my parents and our goal was always to understand and communicate. I have tried to resolve things that way in my relationships throughout my life and have found that 95% of the population are able to do that.

However, there are 5% of the people I have met who have to have drama, have to hang up, or walk out, or avoid, or manipulate, or scream and fuss.... and resolution to conflict is extended way longer than I want to extend it. And because I"m not used to this, it causes me stress. And I'm having to learn to deal with the stress in this situation because there isn't nothing i can do to change the way she does things.

I love my kids. It hurts me to see them make choices that are damaging. I want them to understand the repercussions of their decisions. But if they refuse to speak to me, it's kinda tricky. So my other choice is to simply wait it out. And I stink at it.

Bart will be home tomorrow! Yay....