Well, you've reached that uneasy position out of error. A couple of points - what the dispatcher said Zimmerman "need not do" was pursue Martin. Generally, this is to protect the peace, and BOTH parties. IOW, the advice is just as much intended to protect the good intentioned person, as it is to enable some sort of imagined "police monopoly" on the use of force.
That said, you, Zimmerman, and even Martin are free to follow, contact, and speak to strangers. What none of is allowed to do is initiate unwelcome contact, be it a kiss, hug, or blow. Once you start the use of unwelcome contact, you are on the wrong side of the civil law, for sure, and likely on the wrong side of criminal law too. And if the person you are touching reasonably perceives a threat, they can use force to get you to stop.
The statute is pretty clear. You picked out one section of it, but there is a whole chapter there. I blockquoted a chunk of your link back at you, to show that the law does, in fact, account against the person who started it.
You are correct. As you said, you quoted a chunk of my link back at me. I mentioned the entire chapter and I missed that portion as have several commentators.
I also owe org.whodat an apology. What I said about statutory interpretation is completely correct; a legislator's intent cannot be used to interpret an unambiguous law. In this case, as you pointed out, Section 776.041 is clear and unambiguous. The author of the statute did include the language about provocation in that part of the chapter. If Zimmerman provoked the use of force by Martin, then he could not have used deadly force unless he had exhausted every means to escape the danger other than the use of deadly force. That's a factual issue.
I can't tell you, once Martin used force, whether Zimmerman exhausted every means to escape danger from Martin other than the use of deadly force. Are you certain enough about the facts to state that as a matter of law, one way or the other? I'm not. I don't know, blow by blow, what happened once force was used by Martin.
I do know that the statute contains provocation language (I was wrong and the author of the legislation was right), but it's not absolute, as you see from the language of Section 776.041. There are still circumstances under which one who provokes an incident can use deadly force. I'm specifically not saying Zimmerman was or wasn't authorized to do so. I won't make that judgment unless and until I'm more certain about the facts. My guess is that Zimmerman probably wasn't authorized to do so, but that's supported only by supposition at this point.