December 3, 2012
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You Don’t Say
This is the part of life that I do not always deal with effectively. Someone I know and care about said something that kinda/sorta hurt my feelings/pissed me off.
It was an aside to someone else, not a comment made directly to me.
It would appear, from her behavior, that she does not realize a.) that I heard her or b.) having heard her, I might take offense.
Nothing she has said or done in my presence since has suggested that our relationship has changed or should change in any way.
It is possible, from the specific context of her remark (which I will not go into here,) that she was mollifying someone she cares about by assuming responsibility for her failure to arrange things exactly as this person most likes to have them arranged.
Feel free to insert a few random paragraphs disparaging the need, much less her compulsion to assume blame for failure to feed the need.
She was not talking to me when she made the remark. I just heard it.
And there it sits: this unacknowledged insult, festering away while the two of us smile and joke and continue to swap stories.
Festering….festering…
So what she said was a personal, private remark made to someone not me. It’s not my problem. It’s not my issue. I don’t even know what the core issue was: I can make it about me, I suppose, but that doesn’t make my supposition true. She continues to be as cheerful when she sees me as she ever was, so…
And yet, it’s still there.
Festering.
Quit picking at it, my mind directs: but then, it is my mind that is picking at it.
I really want to take her by the arm, lead her to a quiet corner and say, “What the hell did you mean when you said…?”
We do not do this, in our family.
I wasn’t supposed to hear it, therefore, I didn’t hear it.
You have to wonder how many of these little hot spots we have accumulated over the years.
