writer's moll

A truly shocking, gut-wrenching, unbelievable thing happened yesterday. I had a fight. Ok, not a slugging it out in a bar-room sort of brawl, but plenty of cardigan pulling, wrist wrenching and loud, loud shouting in the street. It's never happened to me before and now I’m cried-out, shell-shocked and incredulous that the normally non-confrontational person that I am could have been involved in such an exhibition with someone with whom I’m generally on the friendliest of terms. I can’t excuse it because I shouldn’t need to respond to everything that frustrates me, especially when the other one’s having a tough time. I can’t really explain it either, except to say that once I’d made the decision to speak up, I became a terrier and couldn’t let go. So when a remark on the usual subject of the hurt she believes has been done to her came up, an inner voice asked if I was going to be a gutless wimp again and let it go unchallenged. So I challenged it. And she stormed out. I should have let her go, I know I should have let her go and then there would have been no fight. I don't know whether it was an act of vanity or insanity that persuaded me I could sort everything out if I could just stop her stomping off. So I followed her and for half a mile we were engaged in what seemed like a life and death struggle to win - for me the time to tell her that her obsession had made her blind to the hurt she'd inflicted on others, for her the right to refuse to listen. I lost the fight and I lost the right to claim to be a rational person. Because of an overwhelming frustration at constantly being accused of a bias that isn't there, at seeing a good looking woman with charm and energy look on everything in life so negatively and of remembering Rob’s uncomplaining fight for life, when he’d have sold his soul for just one of those days she sees as pointless, I lost control and that makes me feel very, very depressed.