I had a fight on facebook.

Long ago, I was a social worker for the state. It was, without exaggerating, the most awful job ever. I worked with amazing, dedicated people who tried so hard, despite their enormous, impossible workloads. But as hard and discouraging as it was, I did okay for the most part, and I kept my cool, almost always. One worker told me that I was "human prozac" and I really have taken pride in that, as weird as it may seem. I want to be even-keel, and I don't want to fly off the handle unnecessarily, and I don't want to tilt at windmills.
But I've been growing a little uncomfortable with my closed-mouthness. As much as I don't want to be a screaming mimi, I also don't want to be the kind of person who doesn't speak up against injustices.
Meanwhile, along comes facebook and I have read plenty of arguments and debates since joining up. Some of them are intelligent and persuasive, but mostly it's people who are sure of their opinions, becoming only more sure. And I have been, to my best effort, inscrutable in my facebook postings. I stay out of arguments, I very rarely even hint at my political proclivities, and I don't leave slam comments on even the stupidest statuses.
This week though, I posted an article about the Cardinal's threat against our health insurance (see, even "threat" is not a word I would have used before this week, I know it is inflammatory), and a little debate opened up on my status' comments. Because I couldn't hold back, I answered their comments, stood my ground, and at one point, got a pretty cranky. Finally, after concluding that this would go nowhere I was comfortable with, I ended the conversation.
I'm not a fighter, and I don't debate, but very very verrrrrry rarely. But if I were to fight, then my weapon of choice would be words. So I'm careful not to get into any sqabbles. I remember working at a residential school with teenage boys, talking in group about fights. One boy said "what would you do?? What would you do if they challenged you like that??" I said "I'd run like hell." (Truth is, I can't run either. I'd probably just curl up and hope they wouldn't pull out my hair.)
Anyway, so here I am with a less-than pristine facebook wall, and I'm wondering... should I delete the whole thing? Lots of people have already seen it. I stand by what I said (if not my crankiness) and feel good about standing up for something, even if it finally took something bad coming to me personally for me to finally speak... I do feel conflicted about that.
Well, we shall see. I'm not sure that I want this black mark on my facebook timeline, but I want to be sure about the message behind taking it down. Yeah, I think I'm going to take it down. But I'm not sure why...
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