| 21 May 2010
(click on article title to view)
Chris and all Seahawk Addicts,
Yesterday in response to a comment posted on here on Seahawk Addicts, I lost my cool and let my anger get the best of me. There was a picture posted that was purported to be me in a very derogatory pose and it just happened that my daughter was having a large party and as she was proudly showing friends and family that her dad was writing for Seahawk Addicts, this comment popped up where not only her friends, but teachers my wife works with and our pastor saw it. Worst of all some younger children saw it including my granddaughter and their parents were pretty upset about it. My daughter called me in tears and asked how I could write for someone who would allow vulgarity like that to be posted and how after what I taught them about being respected I could let someone disrespect me like that. She was devastated. I became incensed. I ended up at the emergency room of the hospital having my life flashing before my eyes and thinking I wouldn't be here to write this today. Luckily, my heart checked out ok today in the physical sense and I left the hospital to go home but I'm not doing so well inside my heart. I guess many of you can't understand how I could get so upset over a picture.
It wasn't the picture per say but the disrespect it represented.
I realize that some of you would just let something like what happened to me just slide off their back but in my family, this is considered a pretty severe insult and a cowards way of acting and that's the way I took it. I was taught that you control your own respect and I passed that lesson along to my children so it's up to me to set the example. Think how you would feel if someone tried to disrespect you not in the privacy of your home where it's between you and them and a computer but in front of your best friends, the people you work with, the people you go to Church with and their young children as well as your own nieces, nephews, and finally your own precious granddaughter. That's a pretty complete list of who saw that photo yesterday from my circle of friends, family, and acquaintances. Of course, it was something of a coincidence that this all happened at just the wrong time for all these people to have seen it and my daughter to have been showing off the blog at just that moment but that's what made it more than just a stupid photo. I don't take well to being insulted especially when it causes my own daughter to become so distressed in the process and I overreacted and posted some things that were in themselves out of place here. I don't remember a lot of what happened afterwards as I spent last evening at the emergency room of the hospital.
For my part in this, I apologize to all you Addicts and especially to Chris. I need to publicly retract any and all things I said about him and set the record straight. Chris has bent over backwards helping me get up to speed on using the tools here at SA to create articles with as well as what he could do to keep these things from happening in the first place. Unfortunately, he isn't able to keep the riff raff out of the site and my taking out my frustrations on him was totally wrong. After cooling down and reflecting, I realize that this is just one individual who has caused this and somehow in my anger, I directed my ill will towards Chris and others who had nothing to do with the attack. For that, I wanted to apologize to Chris here where all can see it and not through a private communication where the apology wouldn't have been seen except by him. I was wrong. If I were he, I would probably have also banned myself from the site for my part in the huge distraction from our main mission. He certainly is within his rights to do so. I'm taking advantage of still having authoring privileges to publish this apology before I go to bed where everyone will see it but I don't expect to be a valued member of the writing team here any longer after today. I let them down too yesterday with my actions and I don't deserve to be a writer for the blog anymore. I really don't feel much like writing right now anyway. I feel pretty sick at heart about the world I'm leaving to my children. When I was a young man, you couldn't have gotten away with such an insult as it would have been known who sent the offensive material and where they could be found. People were a lot more polite back then. I think some aspects of the modern world suck.
To me, it's a saddening fact that I can't just write stuff here on Seahawk Addicts about the passion I've spent 34 years of my life involved with and share it with you Addicts and not have to take insults every time that are made in front of the people I care about the most as my reward. However, if I don't respect myself enough to not allow that to be done, I shouldn't expect anyone else to respect me either including my family and friends. I value family and friends above all and for their sake, I'm either on sabbatical again for awhile or completely gone depending on what the Seahawk Addicts administration wants to do about my part in this distraction from what we're all here for. It seems like whenever I write anything anymore, it causes a disruption from football on the blog and we all have to go through this unpleasantness again and that's not what I want to be remembered for. I feel I need to lay out again for a while so we can all get back to football.
However my fate works out, I want to thank all you Addicts who participated in my contest last season and everyone who enjoyed my writing and especially for the kind things you've said about my articles over the years. I hope that someday I'll write something again for SA if things get sorted out and I won't be causing a disruption on the blog by doing so. As I've learned, these things are out of my control if I continue to expose myself and by extension my family and friends to ridicule by writing articles where anyone is free to say anything they want about them without consequence or any kind of rules being applied and followed. I can only take responsibility for my own actions which I hope I've done to everyone's satisfaction today. My honor is served but my heart is devastated by having to leave something else behind that I truly loved doing.
To the individual who has caused all this to come about, I've got one thing to say. You win because I won't allow you to continue to insult me in front of family and friends. I control that aspect of my life and you can't touch me if I don't allow it. You are powerless to affect my life again and a pathetic excuse for a human being. I consider you to be much less than a man because you hide in the dark and take shots only when no one can see who you are or where you're hiding using today's technology as a shield. What a miserable existence yours must be. I fought against enemies of my country who reminded me a lot of you and your actions and the funny thing is that I even fought for the right for you to be able to insult me in today's world on a computer and hide anonymously and to be perfectly safe doing so. I lost my health forever in that effort and it's days like today that makes me wonder if you were really worth it. I hope that someday you are made to pay for your transgressions as I'm trying to account for mine today.
It's with a heavy heart I say goodbye. No comments are necessary. This is written as a rethorical article. See you guys at the games. Go Hawks.
Hasta,
BillT
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
