No More Mrs Nice Guy ®

Life's a rich tapestry with a lot of scruffy stitching on the back where you can't see it.
Could it be the strong but mild October winds, or sunspot activity?
Is it just the passage of time and blocked things suddenly being moved, like a dam bursting?
I don't know. Easyjet are lying in their Small Claims Court defence and saying that I haven't submitted the receipts that I submitted three times.
Such a waste of time, all this! But it all slots in, between teaching, writing, guitarring, doodling, trying to stop the squirrel nicking the peanuts meant for the birds (second bird feeder destroyed today).
Over the past year I have learned the meaning of the terms 'coercive control', 'gaslighting', and 'shutting people down'. I remember being told in a geography lesson that Chairman Mao had abolished certain Chinese symbols from their script system to prevent people from thinking seditious thoughts, and I didn't really believe the teacher.
But now I see that it's possible for this phenomenon to happen in reverse: situations can be described so clearly to you through phrases that you weren't familiar with that you realise that what has happened to you is actually real, and it has happened to other people too, and it is not actually your fault as you have been told, but is part of a person's toolkit for making sure that you remain powerless.
I feel as though I have grown six inches in height.

Back to the scruffy stitching: my friend at school always used to turn over the embroidery that I did to look at the back. Oh dear! What a mess. Threads all over the place, and the knotted tangles where the silk had caught on another one and refused to be poked back through by the needle, and I'd just given up and re-threaded and started again. Lumps, bumps, blisters and twisters.
You can't get through life without coming across conflict, no matter how unpleasant it is. You have to learn to look at the beautiful picture on one side, and understand that behind it there may be ugliness, but it's your own choice which side of it you decide to concentrate on.