Aslaug's Axe Shed

… but it can be more of a nuissance than really painful.

I’ve just had one such situation arise for me. But first, the background.

For months, I’ve felt that a person that I’ve known for years has been angry with me. He’s a fellow Heathen, and a founding member of the blót-group I’m a part of. I have had no idea why he was angry or at least annoyed, but it’s been so obvious that in the end, it was a major contributing factor in why I stopped playing on a roleplaying group I’ve been a part of for several years. He also played on the same group, and the hostility, in the end, was so palpable I felt I needed a knife to get through it. It was just too damned uncomfortable. However, the man never actually approached me and said anything about this.

Not once. Not at ANY SINGLE, SOLITARY TIME did he approach me and say “Joan, we need to talk,” or even “Dammit! I think you’re bloody unreliable and I’m fed up with it!”

The first would’ve been more diplomatic and consequently preferable, but I’d even have settled for number two if it could’ve cleaned the air and if it could’ve made things hitherto left unspoken come to the fore. I would’ve welcomed it.

I know some people would say “But if you felt there was a problem for all this time, why didn’t YOU approach HIM?”

There are two overwhelming reasons for that. The first is that I couldn’t be sure. What if it was just me imagining things? I might have created a really awkward situation if I had approached him about how I felt he was pissed off at me and it turns out he wasn’t?

Secondly and FAR more importantly, I believe it wasn’t my job. If he has a problem with me for any reason, I believe it is up to him to bring it up. It would’ve been unpleasant, certainly, but still preferable in every way to walking around like two caged animals, trying not to tear at one another.

However, he never said anything.

That is, until now. And the way he’s chosen to make his displeasure with me known has, frankly, surprised me. It’s also left me utterly cold and it’s made me lose all personal respect for the man’s integrity. Simple as that.

I’m home from work these days. I’ve been sick with pneumonia since last week, and I’ve been on a heavy course of penicillin. It has worked and the fever has broken, but I won’t be back to work until next week, probably on Tuesday as I have to talk to my doctor on Monday. I am still coughing up strangely-coloured mucus, but at least it’s now yellow-greenish and runny rather than dark brown and clotted. Disgusting, I know … but there goes. I’ve coughed so much I’ve ruined my throat temporarily and I now have to go on a course of astma-medication to dampen the coughing and give my throat a chance to heal.

In short, I haven’t been this sick for twenty years. Normally I get through a year with maybe a cold or a throat-infection (which could probably be helped if I just remembered to wear a scarf more often) but something like this? Almost two weeks of downtime with fever, aches, coughing and infections? I haven’t felt been ill since I was fifteen. Almost twenty years ago in other words.

Why is that important? It’s important because monday was Solstice. The longest day of the year and a holy day to Heathens. Normally, the blót-group would have a blót then and since it’s a solstice-blót, I’d be the one performing it.

However, this time, a young member of the group has asked to be allowed to perform the ritual, and I had no problem with that at all. Furthermore, sick as I was, I hadn’t given the blót much thought at all. Frankly, I was more concerned with getting well!

However, a few days ago, the man I talked about above, wrote a message to all the other members, saying something along the lines of “Is anything happening with the blót at all? This lack of communication is frustrating!”

I didn’t know he had sent it to everyone. I thought he had sent it only to me. He sent it over Facebook, where the blót-group has a forum, and if I had looked more closely, I could’ve TOLD he had written it to everyone and not just me. But sick as I was, I didn’t look and I responded that I wasn’t the leader of the group … that we don’t -have- a leader … and consequently, everyone could suggest a time and date for a blót. He responded to this by pointing out that A) he had written to everyone and not simply me, and B) as I had previously been known to arbitrarily decide on blót-dates, he assumed I was the administrative center of the group.

My thoughts at the time were that A) I still wondered why, if he had been so frustrated, he hadn’t said anything -sooner- and why he didn’t, for instance, suggest a time and place for the blót and B) I couldn’t recognize the arbitrariness he described, but if he felt that was the case then I could only apologize for having given that impression.

I left my thoughts on A to myself and wrote him back on B, saying that I was sorry that he felt that way.

Yesterday, he reacted to this by not only leaving the blót-group, but by writing on our forum (where even a few people who do not actually blót with us have access) that “empty words and excuses are all we’re hearing from Joan”. And that this was why he wanted nothing more to do with the group.

So he slammed me in public and took off in a huff.

In my world … there’s only one descriptor for that kind of behavior:

Childishness.

A grownup would’ve contacted me first and possibly laid into me, ripped me an extensive selection of new ones and hammered me for being untrustworthy (which is how I read his words about empty words and excuses … my interpretation may be wrong but I’ll probably never know either way). A grownup would have made his disapproval known long before it got to this point, and he’d have talked it over with me.

But he didn’t. He never even tried.

I have no need for people like that. Particularly when he chooses to come down on me like that when I said, publicly, that I was sick and honestly hadn’t given it much thought. Why is THAT important, you ask? Because this same person, when he cuts his finger, will gladly spend fifteen minutes explaining in gory details how that cut may result in blood-poisoning or gangrene. This from a man who, when his infant son started whinging and crying one night, rushed him to the hospital, certain the kid had meningitis (something he later told the rest of us about in great detail). It turned out to be a flu. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be aware of potential dangers. Far from it. But everything has a tendency to get blown up into something truly life-threatening and horrendously painful every bloody time.

But at the same time, when I go down with something for which I need first a six day course of penicillin, then two kinds of throat-medication including an anti-asthma-product and I have to be home from work for almost 14 days, I’m full of “empty words” and “excuses”.

I’ve heard of pots calling kettles black before, but this is probably the first time I’ve seen it to this extent. I’m grossly disappointed and I’m angry, but I’m not losing a moment of sleep over this, nor am Ishedding a single tear. I’ve contacted everyone else in the blót-group and asked them if they share this man’s views on me. If even one person responds that they do, I will offer to talk it over with them, civilly, and I will gladly back down and let someone else perform our blóts in the future … I’ll gladly let someone else come up with the dates for the rituals. GLADLY. I won’t even protest.

In fact, I’ll even leave the group if they feel I’m a liability somehow. And I won’t protest, nor will I be angry. After all, my behavior has apparently just cost us a founding member.

But what I won’t do is give that person the time of day again. An adult would’ve come directly to me months ago and made it clear there was a problem. An adult would not have used a semi-public forum to dis me in front of everyone else.

Simple.