Now I’m going to talk about another thing I used to do that really wasn’t good for me. I don’t think it serves a positive purpose for anyone actually.
I touched on it a little when I wrote earlier about carrying anger and hate around with me until it crushed me. But there’s a little more to this.
Not only would I carry around anger and hate, but I was also very good at carrying grudges and refusing to forgive anyone I thought had wronged me in some way.
By holding on to all the anger and the hurt and refusing to forgive, you just end up hurting yourself. Making that weight heavier and heavier.
I refused to forgive my abusers, and, actually, THAT is understandable. For wrongs that heinous, for some people, forgiveness is impossible.
But I’d carry grudges for the smallest of things.
I had a friend in grade school. You could say she was my best friend back then. But one day when we were painting for art, she accidentally spilled some colored water on the painting I was doing. That really shouldn’t have been such a big deal, right? She said she was sorry, I should have said it was okay, just an accident. I didn’t do that. I said I didn’t believe her and I stopped talking to her. My best friend and I refused to accept her apology. I never spoke to her again, in fact. A short time later we moved away from where we had lived at the time and I never saw her again.
I was like that when anyone ticked me off or hurt me, intentionally or not, for most of my life.
I think it all goes back to those control issues I wrote about earlier too. My insane need to make sure that nothing could throw me, or hurt me.
Another time I remember, where I held a grudge and lost a good friend, happened when I was working in Reno, Nevada at Circus-Circus.
One of the people I worked with was going through a major transition in his life and he was asking friends for advice. He had been going to school, studying criminal justice, and was going through a divorce. He had a military background and, even though he hated every minute of it, he was working as a change person to make ends meet. But he really wanted to be in any kind of law enforcement.
Well, out of the blue one day, one of the other hotel-casinos in Reno called and offered him a job as part of their security staff. He’d earn a couple dollars more and hour, but the hours would pretty much require he drop out of college. He asked everyone what they thought he should do. All of his guy friends saw the better pay and more work hours… just more. I told him that I thought that two dollars more an hour and a couple of extra hours a week, while it seemed nice on the surface, wasn’t going to pay off nearly as well for him as staying in school and getting his degree would. That, while being a security guard in one of the major properties in town was sure to have it’s perks, being a police officer was what he said he had dreamed of since he was a little kid. He should stick it out until he got his degree.
What did he do? He took the job as a security guard, dropped out of school, got his divorce and ended up paying through the nose with the alimony and child support his ex-wife asked for.
What did I do? I got offended. He asked for my advice and then he totally blew me off and didn’t take any suggestion I made seriously. How dare he? Well, I’ll show him! And, I did. Again, I stopped speaking to him. Never gave in, not even a year later when he called me out of the blue and told me I had been right all along. That he had left that job after just a few months, went back to selling change, got back in school and, at the time, only had one more semester to get his degree. Instead, I did a “fingers in my ear, la-la-la I can’t hear you” routine and then added a huge “I told you so” at the end of it. Another good friend I lost because I couldn’t just let go.
And in the end… I was the one that lost out. I was the one hurt by my behavior. They were too, I’m sure, in the short term. But, they knew how to let go and did just that. Let go of me as a friend and went on with their lives, while I was stuck dragging the anger and grudges and past along with me.
If I had been able to just say, “You know what, it’s okay. Yes, you hurt me, but I know you didn’t mean it, so I forgive you”… things might be a lot different for me now.
What I forgot while carrying all that crap around was that I LOVED my friends. They meant the world to me and I would cry for days… weeks… because I no longer had them in my life. I made myself absolutely miserable and none of it was necessary. All I had to do was forgive.
I didn’t get that figured out though until I was much older and had been in therapy (inpatient) for some time. That’s when I learned that, for me, the only way I would be able to move forward again, and really start to heal, was to forgive the two men who had made my life a living hell.
And forgive them I did. Though, in my grandfather’s case, it was a little too late. He passed away before I could tell him that I forgave and loved him. I’ll probably always regret that, too.
I’m going to close this blog entry out with a lyric that I think is pretty relevant.
If you really love someone… no matter how boneheaded they may act sometimes, no matter how much they may have hurt you at some point… if you really love them… You have to forgive them and then let it go…
If Tomorrow Never Comes
Sometimes late at night
I lie awake and watch her sleeping
She’s lost in peaceful dreams
So I turn out the lights and lay there in the dark
And the thought crosses my mind
If I never wake up in the morning
Would she ever doubt the way I feel
About her in my heart
(chorus)
If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she’s my only one
if my time on earth were through
She must face this world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes
‘
Cause I’ve lost loved ones in my life
Who never knew how much I loved them
Now I live with the regret
That my true feelings for them never were revealed
So I made a promise to myself
To say each day how much she means to me
And avoid that circumstance
Where there’s no second chance to tell her how I feel
*chorus*
So tell that someone that you love
Just what you’re thinking of
If tomorrow never comes
