Context without a clue

Emotions really are taking me over

I’ve been sick to my stomach all day. I made a comment on a post of someone whose writing I really admire and they took it as some kind of dig. I tried to explain that my intention was never to hurt them; their response was that I needed to consider how my words might land in a certain context.

Everything is about context. I had several other conversations with people taking a football player’s outburst on the sidelines of the most important game of the season as evidence that he’s a bad person and that the woman he’s dating should think twice about her relationship. I saw the interaction and it never occurred to me that it was anything but a release of frustration. “But he put his hands on his coach!” Yes. To help the coach keep his balance. At least, that’s what I saw.

Other people saw someone with a platform fail to be a good role model for children. Other people saw warning signs of CTE. Other people saw elder abuse.

I hadn’t even finished the the author’s post when I commented and I certainly didn’t know in what state of mind my comment would find them. Honestly. I had absolutely no desire to make fun of or call out this writer and I have no idea what about my comment made them think I did. I stated my intention one more time - tried to explain my context - and have left the thread alone since then. Clearly my words were not making things better.

Every topic discussed in the post has become a reminder that I hurt someone. (The worst of it is that those topics include some of my favorite things, including the artist I’m seeing in concert in a few days.) Just seeing the icon of the app I was on stings. I genuinely wanted to share my enthusiasm for the things the author was enthusing about and it went spectacularly wrong.

When my head is an unfriendly place to hang out, I get into my body and do something physical. Today the emotion is in my body. My head is trying to to find the thing to do to fix it even though the last thing I want to do is cause more pain. I’ve shared in a 12-Step meeting (the topic was “living in the moment” and I basically said “sometimes the moment sucks”). I’ve stayed away from commenting on anyone’s social media today. I’ve tried stuffing the feeling with food.

I hoped maybe writing about it would either help me see how I messed up or give me some philosophical perspective. After this, I’ll try to meditate and then try to distract myself with more Fast and Furious on the elliptical but eventually, time will pass and I’ll make my peace with never understanding what went wrong. This person owes me nothing and has no investment in me.

It’s more important to try to understand than to be understood, but damn if being so horribly misunderstood doesn’t still hurt. I know how to apologize for being the asshole. I don’t know how to stop feeling bad about being called the asshole when I was trying to say “Hey, I love that too!”

Thanks for letting me share.