When I’m Struggling, I F*ck Up.
Kindly, let’s not shoot each other when we trip.
Someone I cared about said a kind thing to me a while ago about this, which was an indication that there was understanding. This year has sucked for me in ways I’d not signed up for, a statement which probably applies to every single one of us. I tried hard to kill myself off in a car accident while moving to a new city, and on top of those was quite the laundry list of other crap that all of us are juggling. My ability to cope with extreme stress, injury and the insults of those who hate for the sake of hating is of course exacerbated by twenty-two concussions, which I laugh about but which have very real side effects. I was immensely grateful for their understanding. That understanding is now rescinded, being overwhelmed by righteous anger about something I wrote.
I fucked up. Royally. And no….
This isn’t an excuse. Not at all. I’m responsible for everything I do, the words I write and what I create. A few days ago I made a mess, something that I didn’t intend but did anyway, and it cost me a connection. I’ve been mulling over that since, and found the evolution of those events instructive in the larger sense, as it potentially touches all of us.
The short story is that I wrote an article, and included this person in a tag. The way I wrote it and in the context it appeared it was damaging. That most certainly wasn’t my thought process at the time, and in the days since I’ve agonized over what the fuck I was thinking. Apparently, I wasn’t, which sometimes happens to anyone. Especially right now. The problem is that the piece got published.
The person in question fired me an angry comment within seconds. I hadn’t even gotten through the first sentence of the feedback, which made it clear I’d fucked up, before I was blocked. I immediately scoured the article and removed all mentions. If there is any good news, this all happened so fast that the piece itself had perhaps three views. So you could legitimately argue that while yes, it was a boneheaded mistake on my part, whatever potential damage the piece might have done was most certainly immediately contained and corrected.
Still, I shouldn’t have published it before I’d gone over it much later and made some critical assessments. No question.
I called, emailed, whatever I could think of to apologize and figure things out. All the doors were barred and locked.
If ever there was a lesson in being cancelled, this was it.
But here is the part I found instructive. When I did finally get a response later, the accusations were surprising. One of them was really surprising, which I will address here.
Conflict arises. It happens in normal times, and it’s far more likely to happen now. Who we are shows up in how we handle that conflict. The more stress we try to carry, the harder it is to manage even small things. The more likely it is that we’re going to do or say something we regret, no matter our best intentions. This might, at least to my mind, be a signpost for all of us to be even more mindful of how stress is affecting each of us in unique ways, and undermining our best efforts. I don’t know of too many saints who didn’t have shit days, and I am no saint. The shit days have a purpose.
Not long before my mother died at 91, she pulled me aside one day and admonished me for pointing out to her that she was repeating herself. She was. She was 91. My mother was a proud woman, and it hurt her ego to have this kind of failing underscored. Years later, not only do I repeat myself more than my mother ever did thirty years earlier, I also forget more details. When someone says that those are faults, or worse, intentional, I have to ask where that comes from.
My speaking coach, whom I respect dearly, does this all the time. He forgets. He holds me to the same standards as his clients who have not had head injuries. While I like high standards, and work my ass off to maintain them, there are some things over which I have little to no control. Doesn’t matter how hard I try. His sometimes overly-simplistic and very harsh critiques are painful and completely out of line. I have done everything humanly possible to address the head injuries and not a whole lot helps.
Interestingly, this man, after having known me for more than thirty years, helped me birth a book, still spells my last name incorrectly. He’s a genius. Does that simple mistake make him stupid? Does he do it to piss me off? Nope. I would be foolish to make that assumption.
There are details that my brain doesn’t retain any more. I can’t list the number of times I’ve struggled to remember the word “scale,” as in bathroom scale, even as I stand on the damned thing. Or “eucalyptus.” A particular close friend’s birthday, which after more than a decade, I still get wrong by a day. Or people’s names, at which I am usually very good. Or simple-to-you, obvious technological steps, which after too many cracks to the cranium, I can’t remember. I just can’t. That doesn’t make me a bad person.
That means I bloody well can’t remember.
It already frustrates the living shit out of me that I live with this. Having this called out as intentional is, well, instructive. Not about what I’m not doing very well but the state of the person making the accusation. It’s like my accusing my aging mother of repeating herself on purpose. I was angry at her for aging, for getting ready to die, for leaving me orphaned. That had nothing to do with her. Everything to do with me.
When we get mad, we expose our weakest links. I do it regularly, as when I respond to a troller rather than just block and move on. On better days, when the injuries don’t hurt, when my migraines are under control, when I can exercise regularly, that’s a lot easier than when the shit doesn’t just hit the fan, it sticks.
Shit is sticking to all of us this year, like it or not, and that which we don’t get stuck on us gets thrown at us by those who dislike what we believe, stand for, look like. That shit has an unfortunate habit of boomeranging and landing right back on the sender. Not that they seem to notice. What I fling stings me a lot harder than it does my target.
I want to believe that most of us are caring, thoughtful folks under duress. Duress does damage. I’ve watched how stress has infected some of my articles, articles which on better days I table, review, and hold off on publishing. I’ve watched how much harder it’s become to rise above the mud-slinging that used to be so rare on Medium, and which now makes this platform as unpleasant as any day on Facebook.
On occasion, I will, we all will fuck the hell up.
Making space for people to fail, to assume good intentions, is to me part of what defines friendship. I don’t know the burdens others carry, their losses or pains or pressures. The high road, from which I periodically topple in a spectacular manner, is hard, hard work. Much of being on the high road is learning how to get back on it.
That is what teaches empathy.
However, for my Hiking the High Road dollar, part of doing my best to be on that road also means that I recognize your right, anyone’s right to fall off. Nothing I say can be anywhere near as injurious to that person as the inner conversation they are having with themselves about their own fuckups. You can’t possibly flail me more effectively than I can when I know I have caused someone I care about any kind of pain or insult.
I am saddened to my core for losing this connection. I have nothing but continued respect and regard for them. That stands. I appreciate the chance for introspection, and the reminder that I really do need to put a piece on pause and read it several times over before it heads out into the ether. There simply are times we think that what we write is saying X, when what it’s really saying is BJZT.
That doesn’t mean we’re evil. It means that there’s a very good chance we’re burned out. I am. Some days more than others. As we head into further lockdown, as the gyms close up, as people get more riled up, frustrated with each other and short-tempered, I would ask all of us- and my hand is up here, to be mindful:
Fuckups are human. Mistakes are human. We will fail. That doesn’t make us evil. It makes us real.
There is much grace in being willing to not know why anyone does anything. We can’t and will never know. There is, however, grace in making space for failure, even when it hurts us. The greater courage is helping that person back up, working through the situation, and in the process coming out the other end of conflict side-by-side on the high road rather than leaving one of you bleeding in the ditch.
There are enough of us there already.