Frustrated Mama

I had a terrible morning today and then had light-bulb moment through my tears. Part of my job involves dealing with all of the services provided by the borough and to help me with this, every service has a representative, most of who are lovely and respond to politeness even when they are grumpy. There is one though who I have to sweet-talk, pester and cajole as nicely as possible every time I have to deal with her. One of colleagues is dealing with her by being patient and understanding; another lost her temper and is rude back. I am not sure I can do the first any more and as a Muslimah I think I have to try and avoid the latter.

Today I received a call from a very distressed member of the public, when I tried to get the relevant service to help, Ms Attitude ends up on the other end of the line. She refused to help, she refused to check within another part of her office for me what was being done for this poor lady, eventually after much badgering, she gave me the name of an officer that might help (who just sounded annoyed that I called). The lady who had the problem yelled at me and refused to give me any more info, the people in the service didn’t know what they were doing. In the end I rang round the offices and got a response and the lady was happy. I was furious. I had a good cry in the ladies, which was unlike me because I have dealt with difficult customers and poor services in different jobs for the last eight years and pride myself on being able to talk people down and talk them around. It was just one of those moments though when I could not get anyone to help and felt very frustrated. After feeling very foolish for blubbering I had a think about what’s important: faith, kids, hubby and my writing (which is really making me happy) - and it all seemed smaller. What also helps me in such times is a) knowing how irrelevant this all is - a moment in eternity that will be forgotten, being aware that everything comes to an end and b) in light of above being aware of your dreams - what is the deepest darkest desire in your heart? If you had the guts to be truly honest with yourself, what would you say you were born to do? Why do you exist? What did Allah put you here to do? When you were an innocent child what was your dream? I truly believe that when you find and do that thing you find peace because then things will be how they are meant to be.

When I start thinking like this, all the little frustrations seem laughable and irrelevant.

I have always been terrible at dealing with frustration, explode, cry, vent, start all over. I realised through my tears that the issue was with setting boundaries and being a bit more assertive so that things didn’t get to the point of my being so fed-up. I think part of the issue too was with gutlessness and not sticking up for myself which is not easy to admit – if you tell the person you don’t like the way they are behaving, then why would you be frustrated?