And This Week Was Supposed To Be Better

Last week, I was insanely busy and incredibly stressed, as many of you know.

This week isn't turning out much better.

I've been struggling with a few things and I've blogged about part of it at Killer Year. I don't know what I was originally going to blog about this week, but it all went sideways when several things came up yesterday that put me off track. The end result was that Kevin came home from fire training around 10:30 and I hadn't written a post. I made it to bed around 1:30 and it's 6:20 now.

I'm seriously grumpy.

One of the worst things about one situation I'm dealing with is that I know I'm right. I've done the acid test - ran the whole thing by someone who isn't afraid to tell me if I'm being a fucking pretentious idiot (these are the only people I really trust) - and was told what I needed to hear. I'm not wrong, something I actually knew from the beginning. It's just that sometimes, when you've been stressed and under a lot of pressure, you second-guess your own judgment. The only problem left was knowing how to deal with the situation.

Something I still haven't completely worked out.

No matter what I do, I risk upsetting people. I probably will upset people. The reality is, I typed in an email yesterday that we all in life have to make decisions we feel horrid about, and part of leadership is being the ones who make the tough call for the right reason, even if you feel like shit about it.

I can know it in my head. I can stand behind any course of action I choose to take - I have a clear conscience on that. But I also know this could be spun badly and used against me.

If this was eight months ago, I wouldn't give this choice a second thought. I know exactly what I'd do. But now, I find I have to consider how it will look and whether or not it will be misinterpreted. I have to consider damage control.

And I'm pretty unhappy about that. I don't want to be anything less than honest and I feel horribly conflicted.

I'm going to say something here I didn't say at Killer Year. When I left the Bible school, there were a lot of fingers pointed, a lot of tongues wagging. Oh, I left with a clear conscience, but a lot of people I left behind didn't know the meaning of the word. That was part of what I hated about my fishbowl life. All the gossip, the manipulation.

There were people who criticized me, who believed a lie. Yes, I worried about it. Yes, I was upset about it. I've always cared too fucking much about what people thought... That they know the truth at least and judge me for that instead of lies.

But over time, truths have a way of surfacing. And I didn't have to do anything myself for it to be proven. When the people who'd hurt me turned their attention to someone else, they had new understanding.

And one by one by one, a lof of the people who'd judged me found themselves in the same boat. Some even called me and told me they finally understood. It was then, in a chat with my 66-year-old 'adopted' mom that I told her you could think that seeing other people face the same thing, there'd be a certain amount of satisfaction in that. After all, I hadn't done anything wrong. Oh, I'm not saying I was perfect, but the reasons people alienated me were because of lies that were spread around about me. It was at this time in my life when my dad was arrested, actually it was the last time I saw him, and a number of other things happened that I was finding it hard to deal with, family truths that had surfaced. I was reeling from that and then...well, someone used info told in confidence about what was going on with my family to hurt me. I read in a daily bread once that the devil makes a falsehood stick by adding it to a grain of truth. This is often how it happens. Take one iota of honesty and add it to a million lies and the insignificant bit of truth in something validates the rest. How many times have I seen that happen, where I've judged or been judged on the part rather than the whole?

I'd already decided to leave the school. I'd already seen too much, knew too much, felt sick with some things I'd had to choke on over the years.

When the same thing happened to some of the people who'd pointed fingers at me, I thought it would feel good. That I'd feel vindicated.

Instead, when I told my friend you might think there'd be a certain amount of satisfaction in that, I told her I'd learned there wasn't. All I felt was empty, and bitterly disappointed that anyone else had to face what I'd gone through. It wasn't that the truth won out. It was that the same people who were so hurtful to me had hurt others, and by doing what they did it took the blinders off their new victims. They saw that all who'd gone before had endured the same, and been judged on the bulk of the lies. It took a knife through the heart for them to bring them to see the truth for others, and that's never how it should be.

Whenever I start feeling like this, I want to withdraw. This is why I don't keep the big things secret - they can never be used against me again.

I suppose a lot right now depends on how I feel at the end of today, but I might take a week off and go awol. Not like I've been around as much as usual anyway. Over the past few months I've had my share of highs and lows and all that's really mattered is that I've kept my own head on straight and can live with myself. It isn't that I can't right now, it's that in the handful of things that have happened, one has hurt me in a way that I'm struggling to deal with and I need to put it into perspective.

Sorry to vent here. I just need to figure some things out.

And get some more sleep.