Let’s dump the notion of nice, easy, difficult and high maintenance
As I continue to navigate the complexities of a new living arrangement, between three people with three different surnames, and behaviour that matches those complexities and certainly isn’t nice, and is pushing my buttons big time and sometimes leaves me in tears when she’s not around, I hear myself say words like this: She’s high maintenance. She’s difficult. She needs to learn to manage her emotions. I started to wonder if those words were even mine. As in, deep down truly my words. They felt heavy and cringe-worthy in a I-can’t-believe-I-just-said-that kind of way. I wondered whether I’d swallowed those cutting words long before I can remember and they seemingly became mine after years of conditioning about how women should behave to make everyone else’s life easier.
