I won :o(

This is a hard post to write. I have a hefty portion of humble pie to eat.
Yesterday's escapade leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I too spent hours fighting a battle, and for what? Essentially to prove that my dick was as big as someone elses.

A year or so back, I got into a sort of race. Driving on some fast dual carriageways, punctuated by roundabouts, someone tried to overtake someone else, who wanted to prove their own prowess as a driver. I don't remember precisely how it developed, but suddently there were 3 cars barrelling down the road. Braking late. Struggling for grip around the roundabouts. All of us were men. None of us would make eye contact with each other. None of us would back off. All of us were prepared to put the lives of ourselves, each other, and in my case, my wife and friend, on the line before we'd drop out of the contest.

Nobody got hurt, although it could easily have been different. My brakes had got very hot, and I couldn't stop in time to make the bend that took me away from the industrial estate. I ended up going onto and right round a roundabout. If there'd been anything coming round, I would have gone straight into them.

At the time, I had a sort of tunnel vision. Afterwards, I wondered why the hell I'd done it.

I think the same thing happened yesterday. You can clearly see the "What the fuck am I doing" moment on yesterdays post. And I think it's that revelation that has led to the other guy has going. I well and truly rubbed his nose in it, not by fighting fire with fire, but by showing some compassion and understanding for what it means to have to live up to your own expectations.

I do understand and can even condone my own behaviour here. I HAD refused to be baited on any number of occasions. I HAD watched this guy wind up half of the people on this forum. So I was getting my own back in style. Weeks of trying to be reasonable got swept away in a tide of stubborn vindictiveness. Ugly as fuck.

I hope he's OK. I even hope he comes back. I think I can cope with him better now that I have a handle on where he's coming from.