Not only am I a people pleaser, I am known in the family as the “peace maker”. I am very conflict-avoidant. I’m not sure why but I suspect a bunch of reasons have contributed. I was bullied by some classic Mean Girls in 6th grade when I started at a new school. One day they would be my friends, the next they would pull my hair, flush my socks down the toilet in gym class, etc. I think I learned not to trust people from that experience.

At some point after I learned that if you don’t make waves, that if you make yourself small, don’t give anyone any reason to not like you then you can get through life without too much pain.

But the pain comes anyway, no matter what you do. I often fantasize about running away from home, living alone in some cabin in the woods with no contact with the outside world, lol.

As an update to my BIL, he emailed me yesterday to say that he done a deposit of $2,500 and I see it has appeared in our bank account. So, we are down to $9,100. At least it’s less than half of what we loaned out. My husband says he is going to call his brother to discuss my freakout and explain my anxiety disorder to him, etc. So then I started to feel bad, like I made a big deal about it and maybe this whole thing is my fault. If I had just left it alone they would have paid something on the loan, and no one would be mad at me.

I don’t know what to think. Maybe my anxiety disorder made me over-react to the Facebook post showing their latest purchase? It has been years of expensive purchases (I forgot to mention the $750 designer dog they got a year ago). Was I wrong to get upset about it? Am I the crazy “bad guy”here?