“That’s alright I’m used to it.”

This scene. I keep coming back to this scene from 1986 “Labyrinth”.
Sarah is racing against the clock. Time is of the essence. She must find her brother. Things are very urgent to her. She comes to a place where her path is blocked by two doors with living knockers. She has to solve a logic puzzle to choose which door to open. That puzzle doesn’t stick with me. What does is how she proceeds.

The knocker she chooses realizes they like their freedom from having to hold and talk around the knocker ring in their mouth. They resist actively having it put back in. The other knocker even comments that they, “Can’t blame ’em.” But Sarah has her quest and chooses to basically suffocate the chosen knocker by holding their nose and forcing the mouth open so she can reinsert the ring. She doesn’t look comfortable doing it, but knows she’s justified. The knocker’s mouth opens. She reinserts the ring and knocks.

The door opens and Sarah scoots past with a quick, “Sorry.” Which the knocker then replies, “That’s alright I’m used to it. ” Sarah resumes her quest and the movie moves on.

My thoughts stay though. How many, many places in my life do I settle into, “That’s ok, I’m used to it?” Is it ok though? Am I signing up/volunteering/stepping up to/fixing things, just because I always have? Or because I should somehow? Do I really have to settle this way? Do I want to?

Now often when I feel myself sigh with frustration at being stuck in a task I do not enjoy, thinking the whole time, I’m the one who does this. The line from the movie floats through my head, “That’s alright I’m used to it.” and I realize it’s not. It wasn’t right for the knocker and it’s not right for me.

So I start digging, asking myself questions, as I do. What isn’t working? Why do I do this at all? Do I have to be the one to do it? Why? Usually somewhere in this questioning I find that I just fell into a routine and did it unthinkingly and that became a standard, both for me and others around me.

I am thinking of this in terms of household and work tasks. They tend to fall on certain people. Asking for a change is brave. It is not easy to do, because it’s never just about the task. It’s about the relationship. Will this change how I’m seen in ways I can’t control. Right now I’m seen as the person who happily (or begrudgingly) does this particular thing. What will fill this void? How will this change affect my reputation as a worker or partner. I think this is really where the fear lies, not in the delegation of the tasks, but the possible damage to the relationship.

If I try to change this will I be seen as disagreeable? lazy? selfish? Sometimes. But this is probably a red flag in that relationship. Even if that is the case I know it’s better to work on changing things because it is no longer working out for me. I am the only one who can assess my needs and feelings, I have to advocate for myself.

When I do advocate for myself I get three typical responses, immediate acceptance and action, disinterest/brush off, or immediate rejection. Sometimes these are knee-jerk reactions, but even those fall pretty much in these categories. All of these options are better than saying or risking nothing. Why? Because I no longer accept suffering in silence. If they accept the change, yay! If they do nothing, or reject, they cannot do either of those things without knowledge it was brought to their attention. Self advocation brings awareness of your situation into the shared reality. Even if nothing else changes, that did. Now if the status quo does not change and still causes me suffering, I am not suffering because I didn’t say anything, I am suffering because something else needs to change.

With this knowledge I make much better informed choices. I can choose to settle back into what I’m used to, even though it’s not working for me. I can try again for change within the relationship, or I can leave the relationship. Each of these options has innumerable variants. I can start working on easing my suffering one way or another. Advocacy is empowerment. Once I state my grievance or concern and I get the reaction I get, these things are no longer guesswork. I don’t have to guess how the reaction to the proposal will be, I know. I can look for patterns and choose what I want for me.

Unfortunately most of the times I have had to do this, I also had to end the relationship. The status quo was valued more than I was. The thing is, that was true before I tested it. That’s why I was afraid in the first place. Testing it did not create that dynamic, it proved it. Once I prove something like that to myself I can’t go back to being so unvalued, while consciously aware that I’m unvalued. I might be used to it, but that doesn’t make it alright.