As part of my clinical rotations in nursing school, I attended several Narcotics Anonymous meetings. While at first I thought the intro, self deprecating statement, and group acknowledgement setup was a bit silly, I quickly came to realize the catharsis served much the same purpose of the Catholic confessional. You had to face up to your own failings before you could list them out to another.
Well, I was just over in another thread, and read something that stopped me dead in my tracks and smacked that brutal mirror right down in front of me. Someone asked just what I'd actually done. Not what I said, but what I'd physically done. Now that was in regards to supporting the troops, and sure, I'd sent some carepacks out, but it made me take a second thought to my behaviour on this site.
More below the fold.
So what hit me? The realization that none of my arrogant sarcasm, none of my oh so witty (to myself) comebacks, none of my pride, none of my anger, none of my words did a damn positive thing for anyone. Were other people behaving childishly? Yes. Did my snide and condescending words do anything positive to resolve the situation? Absolutely not.
All I did was behave in an equally juvenile fashion and hurt people who were already, like me, hurting. Like a wounded dog, I lashed out and bit to spread the pain around.
We all hurt. We've all suffered through 7 years of what I will arrogantly proclaim the WORST president in the history of the United States. We've seen a glimmer of hope for something better, and rushed desperately forward. We've been pushing and elbowing and taking swipes at each other, and in my colossal arrogance, I've shoved myself time and time forward at the expense of my fellow sufferers.
Ya know, I'm hoping Obama wins. I've made hateful, hurtful comments about Ms Hillary Clinton not being a true democrat, being a DINO. But she's every bit as human as I am, and if I can be such a cranky jackass, then just maybe I owe her the benefit of the doubt that she really believed the lies Bush was spreading, that she really believes that our intervention in Iraq, as painful, as costly, as deadly as it has been, will result in a better world. I don't share her vision, I don't agree with some of the campaign tactics. But maybe she's just scrambling and elbowing the same as any of us to get to the glimmer at the end of the tunnel. Maybe she truly does believe that she can better help us out of the darkness W has wrought, and is fighting as viciously as I have fought, out of the despair of thinking that if she doesn't get elected, we truly will end up with Bush term 3, aka McCain.
I proclaimed on several occasions that if she somehow 'stole' this nomination I wouldn't vote for her because of her tactics, because of her positioning. I considered the people who kept chanting Supreme Court, Supreme Court to be trying to blackmail me.
But what have I done that's useful or positive? I've been sarcastic, vindictive, spiteful. And only raised my own and other people's blood pressure. We don't need the stress. We're all in pain as our world seems to crumble day by day. The dollar drops, the Fed buys junk mortgages, gas prices rise. Obama might as well reject and repudiate me, I've been every bit as vicious as I have accused Hillary Clinton of being.
I'm not going away. This is not a GBCW. But it is an apology. I can hardly demand that others grow up when I'm forgetting the first rule of kindergarden. So as I said elsewhere, from now on, if I can't say anything nice, I'm going to try to remember to shut my FPH.
Now go back to the diaries that really matter. Jerome a Paris, bonddad, nyceve, you and many others made this the site I wanted to come to, and I tried to make it a site I wouldn't want to be at. I thank you, and with greater humility, will return to listening more than I speak.