I should be writing chapter 9 instead of this.

I am sort of writing it at the same time. I am working on it, I'm just sort of letting this chapter wash over me. It's writing itself more slowly than the others, but it's coming.

Instead I wanted to talk about this.

I scared myself today.

I am working on editing myself for a number of reasons.

I find it difficult to not be friendly with my students. I want everyone to have a good time while they work. The students I have now have shown me they cannot respect that line and so I have to edit myself when I want to involve them in fun activies or even just sit and chat with them.

I make myself crazy trying to make things right here and always want to chime in with what should be done to have things right. I'm editing that. I'm becoming, for better or worse, less passionate about logic when it comes to the workplace.

I flip out instead of explaining why something is inappropriate. Ex. Evil Doc wants something done I scream at him instead of explaining that I'm not the go to person for this. I'm editing that.

This story I'm writing, it requires a great deal of editing. Every day I come in, read what I wrote and then take out all of the extraneous words, useless phrases and things that will conflict with the "new plan".

It really is for the best that I've started this editing frenzy. Today I was forced to confront someone I didn't want to see.

I had explained to him that I couldn't see him, that it was too hard for me to deal with him on any level just now and that we would have to steer clear of each other for a bit.

He said he agreed. He promised that he understood and that he didn't want me to hurt any more.

Then he tricked me into seeing him.

What scares me is what I almost said. I would not have believed myself capable of such cruelty to this particular person. There are people that you think are exempt. People that you could never say the destructive and life altering angry things to.

I wrote awhile back, though I can't find it to link it, about saying that thing that crosses the line and whether you can ever recover from it.

I came so close to doing that today.

I was like a cornered animal trying to chew off my own foot and willing to hurt him in any way possible just to find an escape.

If this were 1992 he'd have gotten an earful and we'd never have been able to look at each other again.

What hurts and frightens me the most is that since 14 years ago last thursday I thought that no words could ever come between us. We had said the most hurtful things we could, we had thrown words at one another to chew off our own paws and come out the other side knowing that words couldn't hurt us.

Today I realized how easily I could hurt him with my words.

Does that mean that if I had used the words I had edited and then gotten in some horrible accident he wouldn't have been by my side? No. He'd have been there.

But it would have taken a horrible accident, and even then, when the danger was over, I'm pretty sure we'd go our separate ways.

Because what I wanted to say would have been unforgivable, and mostly untrue, but it would have touched on his deepest insecurity in such a way that it would have become true for him and no matter how much I might have retracted it later, it would always be the place his mind went when he began to doubt himself.

It terrifies me that not only did I come very close to saying it, but that it exists at all, a phrase, a piece of misinformation that could pull apart one of the truest things I've known.

It makes you doubt every relationship you believe to be real and solid.

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