There Are Ways...And There Are Ways...

That's my final decision, and I don't want to discuss it more, or read
or hear any more about why you feel differently. It takes an emotional
toll to keep reading or hearing about it. I want it behind me.

Ironically, the above was said as a reaction against something that hadn't even been said. It's a harsh statement that suggests the context of an argument. But I hadn't been arguing. Nearly three weeks earlier, it had already been exceedingly, if unfortunately, clear to me that the decision was final. While it's true that I didn't think the decision should have been final (or made at all, for that matter), after my initial plea for a different course of action three weeks earlier, I left off agitating for what I thought to be better.

Which is not to say that I left off communicating altogether. Hindsight suggests that I should have. There's no question but that it would have been more considerate of me to have left things alone altogether. But I was experiencing my own emotional toll, and no longer had the context to warrant moving myself over to honor the preferences of the other. Maybe if I'd had hope that reticence would have produced a different result, I would have managed it. But I didn't.

Thus did I express what I found myself pressed to express.

In my own defense, I will say that I revised and edited and re-read and re-read before hitting Send (email, of course). I made sure that I wasn't lashing out. I kept from being defensive or attacking or whining. Believe me, I have greater reason in this particular circumstance to lash out. An attack from me would have been understandable, and more warranted. But instead of wanting to slash tires and the like, I was stuck in caring and gratitude and whatever shredded modicum of hope I could muster.

I tried really hard to pay attention to the impact my words would have on my reader - since I couldn't manage my reader's ideal of no words from me at all.

So what makes me find the above statement particularly harsh is that it was not couched in any niceties at all. I understand that it was coming from a place of frustration and hurt and some measure of emotional turmoil...but the same point could have been made nicely, and without the implicit attack on me. Some recognition of how that "final decision" was affecting me (not well) would have been welcome. Made the undesirable decision that was not mine more manageable.

It may not be fair for me to judge others for their decisions when I think they're wrongly made and poorly rendered, but in my unfairness, it is clear to me that the same message wasn't presented...well, better.