This is going to be a short story, probably.

Context: last Saturday I had to go to an Urgent Care because I had a UTI and the symptoms were bad enough that I didn't think I could handle the shift I'd picked up at work. But because Boyfriend was asleep and would be leaving town later and the next bus was about 40 minutes away, I thought my only quick option was to ask Old Yeller for help.

Surprisingly, she actually fucking came through for me. Kind of. She couldn't pick me up because she couldn't leave the grapes she was boiling to make into jelly alone lest she ruin them, so our housemate offered to do it. Then when I got home I had to wait for said grapes to finish boiling before Old Yeller could take me to the Urgent Care, but that kind of worked in my favor because I needed to drink water beforehand so I had a sample to give those guys.

The visit itself was pretty uneventful, everything went pretty smoothly and I left with a 5-day course of antibiotics. The fun part happened on our way home from the appointment. We get in the car, and she asks me to get in her purse and grab her cigarettes and lighter for her.

...She followed this request up with "I know you don't like it when I smoke in the car, but it's what I want, so, deal with it." With this little laugh thrown in there somewhere like she was just being funny. Like it just made her such a Badass Bitch for taking what she wanted.

For some reason, I wasn't that pissed off about it. I just internally went "[sigh] Really? You can't even wait until we're not in a confined space? Your desire to smoke is more important than me wanting to be able to breathe? And you know I don't want you to, since you literally just said you're aware I don't like it, so do you just not care? Of course you don't, because in the same sentence you told me to deal with it."

Looking back, I don't even know why I rolled over. I don't know why I didn't stand up for myself and say "Well, I want to be able to breathe and not cough constantly, and I know you don't like that but you can deal with it." Or I could have just thrown them out the damn window, though I wouldn't have the ovaries to actually do such a thing.

Small bonus tidbit:

On the way to the Urgent Care, we'd been talking about what a two-faced bitch our housemate can be and she said she prefers when people get up in her face and say "what the hell?" about things because then "At least I know what I did/At least I know what's wrong." She tried to encourage me to do the same and go "What the hell, mom" to her about stuff because then (paraphrase) "I can tell you why I did what I did and either you're in the wrong or I realize that I shouldn't have said/did that. Like mother's day [oh my fucking god are you still fucking on about that]--that ripped my fuckin' heart out, but at least now I know."

HAHAHAHAHAHA bitch what? Really? You're trying to encourage me to get in your face and tell you what you did to me and lay it all on the table? That's not making progress, and you know why? Because I know exactly what would happen if I did that--I'd lay into you and get angry (because ~20 years of abuse will do that to a person), and it'd feel really good for me, but then even though you basically told me to do so, you would throw that out the window and absolutely rage and scream at me because you can't handle anything negative about you (as I learned from the "discussion" about the floors). Why do you think I haven't even tried to have a rational discussion about why I "don't like you yet"?

I am so sure that entire conversation was a giant hint she was trying to drop of "You can tell me what's wrong," but she doesn't understand that I cannot stand up to her, I cannot say no to her, and I cannot be honest with her 90% of the time because I know what the consequences are and I don't ever want to be yelled at again. I'm afraid my brain would break if I were.