Bullies and Blessings
Well, my problems with my landlord continue. He is still trying to get me to pay for a service call made last month to look at the boiler. I wrote a very polite, detailed letter saying that I felt the bill was not my responsibility. His response, if you can all it that, was to send another copy of the bill with a cover page marked PAST DUE, FINAL NOTICE. Not the courtesy of a response to my letter, just another copy of a bill which is both ethically and legally his responsibility. It's particularly ironic since two weeks after my call the allegedly problem-free boiler required more than five hours of repair work.
In the past, I would have paid the money just to avoid dealing my anxiety over arguing about it. But I am changing. I'm genuinely angry about all this. I have already swallowed the cost of exterminating the 15 mud wasp nests because his office didn't want to do it. I swallowed the cost of the groceries I had to throw out because the refrigerator didn't work when I arrived. I swallowed his rudeness about that and the two months wrangle about removing his furniture. I have stood my ground about getting his furniture removed and about keeping Abigail here and I'm going to stand my ground about the $60 for the boiler call. I don't owe it and I'm not going to pay it.
That said, it's all very frightening to me for a lot of reasons. First off, I don't like conflict. It makes me anxious under the best of circumstances and these are not the best of circumstances. I have a month to month lease and in an area of the country where tenants are few and far between and therefore pretty much unprotected legally. Whether realistic or not, these conflicts make me feel like I am in peril of losing my home and they make my home feel unsafe. Not a good way for anyone to feel, but particularly difficult for an agoraphobic whose home is supposed to be her haven and safety zone. Despite having grown up with a psychopathic bully, I continue to be completely baffled by the bully mentality. I don't get why it's fun to frighten or hurt someone, particularly someone who is relatively defenseless. Bullies are, of course, cowards dressed up in scary costumes, so to speak. But far from being harmless, they are vicious and destructive cowards who are clever enough to pick on people who they are pretty sure can't fight back.
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