Inner thoughts

I have been meditating a lot about the whole fiasco with my response to the ritual at Pagan Pride. I have been asking myself "why?, why so upset?" Well I think there are several layers to this question. At the most shallow of levels I simply didn't care for the way it was planned out and executed. However I know from my totally out of character response that its much deeper then that. At some level I was afraid. Afraid that non-pagans would get the wrong idea about what we neo-pagans do for ritual. That fear comes from pride. I am proud to be a neo-pagan, so proud in fact that I don't want non-pagans to think less of neo-pagans and thus me. So Pride and fear, and thus ego was an issue here.
Expectations, I had come to the ritual with certain expectations and they weren't met. Expectations can get a person off balance emotionally when they aren't met. I should have known this. I have seen my mother do this so many years at the holidays. She always had such specific expectations of people. e.g. how they would act, what they would say, what she would say, ect. When the reality never lived up to her expectations it always sent her into a depression or at least contributed to it. Mostly I had expected the ritual to meet my spiritual needs and it didn't. I had hoped that it would and I wouldn't have to hold a Mabon/Alban Elfed type ritual myself. When it didn't meet MY needs I got annoyed that I would have to be bothered to do it myself.
My disappointment with the ritual triggered fear. A fear that I would some day create and lead a ritual that made others feel as put off and as unhappy as I was. It's sort of like you don't like people who represent aspects of yourself that you don't' like.
Arrogance. I honestly believed/believe that I could have done a much better job, and was righteously indignant that even though I had offered to help with the ritual a few weeks earlier, I was never consulted, and in my mind "NOW look what they did". All of that is Bullshit of course, but there it is.
Though I don't mean this as an excuse, I believe it is a factor to my unusual behavior. I have been fairly stressed out. Wife's been ill, school work is constant, money is tight as always, missing my kids...the list goes on, but I think you get the idea.
So all of these things leaked out when I posted what I posted on a different place. At the time of the writing I didn't mean it as bad as it sounded later, but that's how our shadow-self works at times. I wasn't recognizing what I was saying and doing. In the end, some really good hard working people got hurt, friendships were damaged, though I don't think beyond repair. The good in all of this is that it has shown me things I have yet to polish about myself.