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It's not. Your house, your rules, and I knew what I was getting into when I signed up.
I like The Motte, I like (most of) you, I like the principles behind this place, I like what you are trying to do. And I do believe in free speech, so I'm not asking for bans or demanding this place is run how I want it/like it or, worst of all, issuing ultimatums along the lines of "him or me, choose!"
I've mocked people for flouncing off, so consider this karma or just retribution or what you will. Whether we call it the Wheel of the Law or the Wheel of Fortune, it turns inexorably and inescapably and we are all bound to it.
Yes. See "committed to free speech" above. Sky is perfectly entitled to tell me go fuck myself if offended by what I said to them. I realise the mods don't want this place to degenerate into exchanges of insults, but sometimes "fuck you" is the bon mot.
"Acting the martyr"? Maybe that is indeed what I'm doing. But you, Amadan, said to me that "you don't get to just start cursing people out because you're offended".
I wish to God I was only "offended". That would be so much easier and less painful. I'm not offended, Amadan, I'm flayed raw. It's been ten years since my mother's death, and it still hurts to think of it.
So to hell with it, if I'm playing the martyr, let me play it to the hilt.
She was diagnosed in February and dead by June. She died hard, and fearfully. She said to me "I don't want to die", but what could I say? This was fatal, we all knew it. Over that period of five months, she went from an active woman to a wizened, aged thing that could barely sit upright in a chair. She hated hospitals, so we kept her at home as long as we could.
Morphine patches helped, but when they were sufficient to keep the pain down (not gone, just down), they left her groggy and limp-muscled, and rendered her doubly incontinent because she wasn't able to alert us in time or get out of her bed to use toilet facilities. As you can imagine, this was humiliating for a woman who had always been private and independent.
When we cut back on the medication so she was more with-it, the pain was unbearable. I don't know if you've had to listen to someone moaning and whimpering in pain for hours while you're desperately applying morphine patches and hoping they'll build up fast again in her blood stream, while waiting for the ambulance to come and take her into hospital for the final days she has left.
Oh, and talking of hospitals: because it was so urgent, she was taken in by our shitty local hospital instead of the regional hospital. We were warned about this, but we knew it already: the matron had a reputation for stealing from the patients, so my sister took off my mother's wedding ring and kept it safe.
Imagine that: having to take the wedding ring off a dying woman's finger because the medical staff will rob her corpse.
Well, the end wasn't long after she went in; they had her on pain control, so she was semi-conscious at best, and unaware of where she was, what was happening, and so on. She lasted a day or so and then the end, which by then was a mercy.
Is that enough "playing" for you, Amadan?
So this shit-for-brains comes to piss on my mother's grave, and I yell at him, and you grab me by the elbow to rebuke me. Heaven forfend I use harsh language to someone pissing on my mother's corpse!
I am genuinely sorry not to be able to comply with your requirements, but I also genuinely cannot.
However. Your house, your rules. I don't need to be here, and you don't need me to be here. At the end, I'm here for entertainment and fun. When it stops being fun, time to go. I wish all of you the best and success in your endeavours, guys and gals and those of you what ain't too sure. I'm not flouncing out because I'm too dispirited to flounce, let's say I'm slinking away.
And you are all completely, positively, absolutely entitled to mock me for flouncing/slinking off when I got my knuckles rapped.
Good night, good luck, and good bye to you all. Let's have one for the road, the deoch an dorais.
Look, I'm sorry about your mother, really, and I understand that this subject hit a nerve for you. I don't even blame you for losing it and telling the OP to fuck off. But we can't make exceptions for every person who feels personally aggrieved. You admit yourself that you understand why the rules are the way they are, so basically, you did it knowing it would get you modded. And ffs, all I did was tell you "Stop that."
I do not think this is cause for you to decide you're not wanted here. I, for one, will be sad to see you go. But I'm not going to beg you to stay.
I hope you change your mind, or that you return after you've cooled off.
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