The Alternative Comment Box, Short Term – Consideration

John left me a comment to my last post yesterday and it reads “You are upsetting me Ursula, I don’t need this”.

I took note of it, did not – as promised – release the awfully long, and rather awful, post I had penned yesterday morning and referred to, left pending to ponder on. Just as, late in the day, I was returning to my desk, John’s comment stopped me in my tracks. I like to think things over when other people are hurting. So I slept on it.

Yes, when other people are hurting. Look at John’s sentiment again: I am upsetting HIM. HE doesn’t need IT.

What I find staggering that John does not address the fact that I too, maybe, made abundantly clear, am upset by his/the trio’s (in)action. For Pete’s sake, is everything just about you John, Joy and the Sculptor? Do you actually ever fucking (falling into Rachel speak) care about anyone else but you?

Last night, in wake of your plea, I nearly softened. Poor John, I thought to myself. Mustn’t upset him. Luckily, sleep tends to act like a windscreen wiper. All becomes clear in the morning – what has become clear that you don’t give a shit about me. Nothing of what I have said over the last two or so weeks (and before) has sunk in. All you see, all that counts, is that YOU are upset. That YOU don’t need “it”, whatever IT is.

Sorry, John, you should have thought about that before. Before you edited me even the Angel wouldn’t recognize his mother by the way the three of you have managed to depict me.

Actions do have consequences, John: You can’t spit at someone as the three of you did and then demand that I don’t wipe your spit off my face. 

U

 

Olympian heights

Some ways one can mend, some shouldn’t be mended.

Not for the first time I have to conclude that I am one of the least competitive people who have ever walked this earth. Everyone appears to enter contests – running, writing, cooking, best dress, biggest fish … you name it, whatever. People will compete, measuring themselves against each other: Gold, silver, bronze. First, second, third. I don’t get it. I so don’t get that I sometimes wonder whether I am looking from the outside in.

Slave to my tendency to wish to get to the bottom (and I mean scraping the barrel) of everything I recently asked myself whether I am just a bloody coward. Whether my refusal to enter any competition, in whatever sphere of life, just means that I’d hate to lose. That in truth, cruel light of day, I am SO competitive that entering a competition gives me the jitters because I can’t face coming second. Yes, enter pause for thought. Go into your heart. Dig. Assess soil. Dig some more. Remove smoke screen.

Fact is I am not competitive. Which is not a virtue but a curse. I don’t give a damn. One can analyze the shit out of it, look at it from all sides like a Rubik cube – fact is, competitions don’t mean anything to me. When I couldn’t avoid being entered into something and I won – it meant nothing to me. Nothing. I look at other people and their joy in the face of ‘success’ in wonderment. Someone once put forward that I – best case scenario – so rest in myself or – worst case scenario – have such arrogance that I don’t need the world’s approval. It is true. I am my one and only judge. Though will take the jury of those dear to me into account before condemning myself to a life of hard labour to condone my sin of  just skipping along.

U