Okay so for the past month and some change I have been trying to get everything smoothed out with the bills since moving into the new apartment. I have called the cable company regularly to make sure that all was well and good after the transfer. I make a couple small payments when they ask me too and last time I checked I was supposed to be in the clear to just pay my regular monthly balance of 93.19, fine and good right?

Well today I call in to pay the bill and the automated message informs me that I have a bill due for 278 mother fucking dollars! Are you kidding me? Shit, fuck, shit fuck!

I take a short breather and start trying to be connected to a real person so I can resolve this fiasco. At first they're insisting that I owe a month of back billing from when I moved but something about that didn't sound right. I let them know that I paid everything up to date before I moved and even had to fork over another 48.15 in cash to the guy who was installing the cable to bring me current before he was allowed to do the transfer of service.

We continue to speak to each other but the lady is insistent that this is what I actually owe and that I somehow owe almost 3 times my normal bill because of one past due bill? Finally it clicks with me, the lady says the bill is for the first of 31st of August to September 28th... holy shit! I've been living in my new apartment since August 31st, they never did a disconnect order for my old place and are trying to bill me for it! I tell her that there's a mistake and that I had moved and wasn't going to pay for someone else to have cable for the past month because the installation guy had told me he'd put in the disconnect order. She insisted that I was supposed to call to do the DC and if I hadn't then the bill was my responsibility (not that crassly but in prettier words)

Finally I have to insist to speak with a supervisor since I'm clearly getting no where. After some bit of time on hold I am returned to the woman who had been assisting me before being placed on hold. She's figured out that yes, in fact, there had been a DC order placed on August 31st and for some reason they had billed me for the old apartment as well, which left me a balance of 158 dollars and some change... WTF better but still WTF

At this point we continue to discuss what the hell had been going on. Apparently there was a past due balance on my old account and some blah blah blah... but I tried point out that I wasn't allowed to transfer service until I had paid in full, which was why I paid the technician who installed the cable 48.15 to get me up to good. She informs me that for some reason they had applied it to the new account instead of the old one... again I'm getting a little frustrated about being told I'm wrong and liable for payment due to someones error other than my own. Might I add... I have a hard enough time owning my own shit but paying 60 extra bucks for an error I have nothing to do with is a bit hard to swallow. At this point I inform her that I'm cool with paying the 93.18 because I've been told every time I called in the last month that I had to pay X amount of money but then I was good and I wasn't interested in trying to do it again.

I was seriously considering getting rid of my service and getting Dish Network to be honest. I took a big deep breath and told her the whole situation was really leaving a bad taste in my mouth after two months of trying to assure the situation was 100% in the good. I've been with Insight for 3 years and this just seemed a series of horrible mistakes that was leading to me paying an inflated bill. At that point, when I had peacefully resigned to the fact that I would pay this bill and then talk to my roommates about whether we wanted to change service or not she told me that the very best she could do to resolve the issue was to take another 59 dollars off the account and we'd be good and next month my bill would only be 93.19. In the end today I payed 91.69 but it was a headache getting there.

But strangely the message is that freedom only came after I accepted defeat. It's so cool how you can find a metaphor in your daily living like that. Now I'm really glad I wrote this blog, because I might not have realized the lesson to be learned in this little hour long struggle for control.


 

Haha, woot, thanks for everyone who has viewed this, today this blog has hit 300 views! Keep coming back and I'll try to make it interesting for ya ;)
 

So the last couple days have been good, but have had this feeling attached to them. I'm trying not to act out on my defects of character when I am given an opportunity to see them. This has been uncomfortable, these have been my character traits and I'm not sure what to replace them with. Today has been a lot of fun; I carved pumpkins with my younger brother and his girlfriend, watched football, made pumpkin seeds and even had a surprise visit from my mom and dad. The sky was beautiful here and the weather was perfect. Yet somehow the whole day I had an underlying feeling of not being good enough, it was like something nasty was crawling just below the surface.

One of my defects of character is my need to live in turmoil... well not need... something has to be happening to keep me in conflict either internally or externally for me to feel safe because when I grew up there was very little stability and an abundance of pain. It's a sick thing, but my comfort zone is a very painful place chauck full of chaos. I don't like this and have been working on it for a couple years now, but that doesn't take away the fact that when things are peaceful I am in a state of discomfort, it's as if my spine is actually grinding itself into dust at the base where it meets my tailbone.

That stated, I had various opportunities today to feed into things that could only bring my life chaos and I made decisions that allowed me to not feed them, but in doing so I had to step away from conflict (which I normally run head first into in situations like these). My feelings have been hurt today but I was able to surrender and see things for the way they really are and be okay with the fact that my plans aren't the only plans and when they don't work out I need to let go and find acceptance rather than create turmoil in my spirit over unfulfilled desires.

So despite having a wonderful couple days I have been going to bed feeling... dirty or unclean in this place that sits really close to my heart. Well I thought the best way to get rid of this would be to work on a gratitude list. As I'm coming to a close of the list I realize that a lot of my emotions are coming from the pain of change. It was at the moment I acknowledged that I was grateful for "pain" that a smile spread across my face at the thought of being in pain. I wish I were joking but my body actually tingled with a shiver of ecstasy and I felt much better, but at the same moment my hands broke out into a full blown sweat like they've done since I was a child. At this point I realized that no matter how I've felt today my hands haven't hit their uncontrollable nervous sweating, not when I woke up, not at the meeting, not while spending time with my family carving pumpkins...

What the fuck is wrong with me? I'm physically receiving pleasure from acknowledging emotional turmoil, something I've fought against all day? But at the same time some part of me knows that is so wrong, how can I only be comfortable when my body and spirit aren't in harmony? The last couple of days have been peaceful but not... exciting maybe... I don't know... peace drives me crazy, do I need the self loathing and self imposed misery?

I don't get it, but I'll simply say that trying not to act on character defects or inflict harm on others when you feel like you've been hurt is difficult. For me it is perhaps more difficult to accept that those problems don't have to drive me crazy and that life moves forward and I can move forward with it. Right now I'm still caught up in feeling better because of one simple word, "pain". I cannot give in to the temptation to inflict physical harm on myself and I cannot allow myself to continue to lash myself with the emotional whip.

Just for today, I deserve more than I'm willing to give myself. Just for today, I'm going to remember that I love myself and that no matter what I feel, it will pass if I just give it time. I may not be comfortable when at peace yet, but one day at a time I can move in that direction and as long as I don't get high today I will most certainly have a shot at tomorrow.

God thank you for everything in my life, even the shit I don't understand.