Bad Days

I'm having a bad day today.

 

At first, I thought there was not a reason, but upon reflection, I realized that there are a couple of them.

 

The first is that, in spite of my cute new shoes, I'm mad at my hair and my nails and my skin for being awful and terrible. I'm mad I didn't put on better makeup today. I'm frustrated with always feeling less pretty than all of the girls in the office. It's a little awful.

 

The second is to do with an event I had been starting the first phases of planning for a friend. I was super excited about it, and really thought it would work out, but I found out that I had to work with other people (family of friend) to plan it (since they'd already started planning without really telling anyone), and that's where the roadblock started. They wanted to hold the event at x date, but after discussion with my friend, it was determined that was a crappy time and that sooner would be better financially, emotionally, and physically for her. The only downside is that it would exclude one family member. I didn't think this was that big of a deal - it was one person, albeit a close family member, but in the same way I wouldn't expect my sister to change the date of an event just because I couldn't make it, I thought that the other parties would understand since it is an event for my friend specifically.

 

However, when I presented this idea, the response was that they would now hold their own event, and we could hold our party when we wanted, which just caused further issues. If this were the case, my friend would have to attend three events (since she has one in another state, and we had wanted to have in PA), including one at the inconvenient time. I made the horrible error of trying to determine if it would be okay with my friend to do this, and it ended up causing her a lot of stress, and I feel incredibly guilty.

 

Now, I find myself frustrated at myself for stressing out my friend, frustrated endlessly with the opposing parties, and also frustrated with the one person who might be able to help me resolve this (spouse of friend) who I kind of feel could be throwing more into this, but yet I also feel guilty for asking him to do it at all. I'm super pissed at the other parties because now, instead of having one nice event for my friend, I am guessing what will happen is that they will have their event, and I'll no longer be involved in the planning and I would not expect to be included in the event itself, because my friend now thinks it's too much stress to argue with the other parties.

 

What drama! It just reminds me more why I often don't like working with other people, especially people who I feel are being kind of selfish and honestly should have been willing to compromise even in the slightest (something they haven't given any indication of). All their reaction did was make me not really want to work with them on this (because of their adamant and immediate negative response to holding the joint event), and instead making me not want to interact with them at all.

 

I blame myself for it most of all, because I should have known better than to try to work with other people on something. Upon finding out that other people (her family) were planning, I should have backed off and left it alone (because family trumps friends in all instances, especially in traditional families - it's not proper to ask to be included). Now I feel like I've ruined this, and damaged my relationship with my friend and her spouse, as well as her family, and feel like I should have just stayed in my proper place.

 

I made a terrible mistake, and then followed it up with even more mistakes. As much as I hate backing down, and I hate not talking things out with people and fixing problems and telling them how I honestly feel, I'm going to let this go, and I'm going to let them plan their event, and I will not be involved at all. I'm disappointed, and I feel like I let my friend down, but I feel like I would do worse by trying to keep going.

 

Shame sits deep.