Trouble in Paradise

There is trouble in paradise and it is a good thing....

Paradise is labelled such by those who are getting their own way and having the best time, and before you think this is a feminist (dirty word!) tirade in the vein of 'I am either a nag or a doormat', well it is a bit but not wholly. My life is wonderful, well liveable, if things are going my way, I freely admit it. I prefer - as do we all - to be doing stuff we enjoy with people we like without the hassles and hiccups of other peoples' needs coming into the equation.

If Doris and Jimmy (I laughingly quote Big J here) are talking to Doris plus1 and Jimmy plus1 in separate places, and giving sides of some story on the domestic front, Doris plus 1 will always see Doris' side (or else Doris'll get a new plus 1) and Jimmy plus 1 will see Jimmy's view as the fair and balanced one. Could be gender, could be loyalty, could be fear! But were a panel of independent experts to judge a given situation you would see that generally, it seems that there are patterns. Good, kind and hard-working people get taken advantage of, those who will do anything for a quiet life also lose out on occasion. If you never stand up and say that you need stuff and you cannot cope with the situation as it is, it will continue to be assumed that all is well and you wouldn't be doing what you do if you didn't like it.

WRONG (dong) people do good and kind things because they want to and are moved to, but the cumulative effect of being taken for granted, or more accurately, the stuff you take on being taken for granted over and over builds up in a person and eventually, if you feel you can, you explode and have the mother of all tantrums and perhaps go to Montana USA to ride horses - and everybody thinks you are over reacting because a short trip to the shops (for e.g) is not the end of the world/too much to ask etc.

But there are those who don't go pop, and that is a worry - where does all that cortisol and adrenaline go?

Would that I could invent something along the lines of the "naughty chair" or the famed "time out" for such people (I know a few), a "paradise lost" sort of device so that those around you would take VERY seriously the emotional land you were hurtling towards in your brakeless modern mental machine.

Wear loose clothing, use drugs if necessary and chill the f out - try and let the world turn without you tonight (gotta love ALW) Ok, so it's Andrew Lloyd Webber....