The Dust Is Clear; October 20 2019

People can get mad at people they care about. That’s not news. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to get angry with someone you love, and it doesn’t change the way you feel about them when all is said and done.

Natch, I’m barring instances of friendship-ending, relationship-wrecking stuff. Like, if someone cheats on you or murders your pet or something, that’s a whole separate thing. I’m talking about the slights that ultimately won’t matter a year down the line. It’s okay to be pissed off! And hopefully things can be made right and your love and respect will stay intact.

But if your response to being angry is to lash out and attack everything about your victim’s character, was there ever really love?

I find that the nastiest things crawl out of the woodwork when someone feels they’ve been wronged. Recently, I made a few mistakes with some friends, and immediately sought to make things right. I apologized, replaced something that had been broken by my mistake, and swore to learn from what I’d done.

The response was to attack me for my mental health and disability, my ability to parent (including an implication that I had things in common with an abuser from my past), and the way I live my life in general.

At first, I was extremely hurt. I couldn’t fathom why these things were said when they didn’t relate to my mistake, and why they’d be said if they weren’t true. Now, I’m thinking about it differently.

But the fact is, those words still came from somewhere. Even if my (former) friend doesn’t really believe those things, they were unacceptable to say. That friendship is over, because they proved that they don’t really know me or respect me enough to bring up their apparent issues with me outside of an angry rant.

If you do care about someone, honestly, then take responsibility for your anger. Whatever happened may have been someone’s fault, but it’s still up to you how you respond. The things you say are still on you. Don’t be surprised if the person you were angry at isn’t there after the dust settles.

Now it’s story time!

A distant whisper pulled me from my thoughts – one of the goddesses cautioning that something was in my way, so softly that I couldn’t even tell who’d spoken. My bladed gloves ripped through the foliage in front of my face, giving myself just enough room through the leaves to peek through. I still had cover from the forest in case whatever it was had a taste for flesh.

But it wasn’t a bark-hound.