young enough to (not) let it go
forgive-less, forgiven, forgive-me-not
I like talking about personal things, when I can get the words right. One time I wrote several thousand words about my high school experience with boys. Partially because I was still trying to figure it out, but also because I had been removed from the situation enough to form the right words.
The right words.
More often than not I don’t have the words right, so I don’t talk about personal things. I don’t talk about how I feel, I don’t talk about how I feel about myself, and I definitely don't talk about how I feel about the world. All of these things are constantly changing every day. How could I find the right words, when tomorrow the feelings change?
I also don’t like talking about myself too much which is weird, since I’m a writer.
That's why I always operate in Fiction. It’s a way for me to kind of talk about myself without talking about myself. My characters have tendencies toward hyper-independence and comic relief. Those bits and pieces are me, without me having to say that it is me.
Hence this post, and maybe the beginning of something new, I think the best way for me to get over this fear is to take the plunge.
I’ll start with a thought I had to settle myself with after a conversation I had.
I don’t forgive easily.
From a young age, I knew this to be true. I could hold a grudge like no one’s business. You could say something to set me off and I wouldn’t let you know until three years later. It’s that serious.
Of course I’m going to say I don’t really operate like that anymore. I don’t hold onto things that aren’t good for me. I don’t hold onto grudges for the purpose of revenge or evening a score. I don’t look down on people for a single mistake they made against me.
The grudges though, they do change me. They change the way I interact with people, the way I see the world, the way I preempt things, the way I intersect people’s interactions with me.
But then again that’s not really new. For several years in elementary school my report cards would read ‘shy but really kind,’ and ‘easy to get along with’ and ‘always a pleasure to have in class’ and several other things of that nature. My parents loved hearing that during Parent Teacher Conferences.
They would never know that I held a grudge against the kid who accidentally knocked my front tooth out of my mouth before fifth grade. I was somewhat friends with him but after I lost that tooth? It was like we were no more than acquaintances.
I never really got the chance to examine why I do this, why I hold grudges in the intricate way that I do. Except when I had this conversation in real life with people that have known me for a year.
Who could tell that I don’t forgive too easily. Not in a bad way, but in a practical way. In a way that says, ‘you ran me over with your car, i’m not going to get back under it and trust you again.’
For some reason I didn’t think I was that—perceivable.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to rationalize that people know me. Like they know the sound of my laugh, they know my handwriting, they know what mood I’m in. They see me and they retain that information for a later time.
Lord knows I remember a lot of things about people. I can remember the apartments I used to be friends with in elementary and high school. I can remember the little quips people say. I can remember.
So maybe that’s why I have a hard time letting go of grudges. Because before it, I thought I had a complete picture of someone I knew. I thought I knew the ins and outs of a person. And to be faced with the fact that I either didn’t pay attention too well or I was tricked is hard. Even saying tricked feels wrong, because I don't think anyone has ever manipulated me into knowing a created/manufactured personality.
But it’s what it feels like.
Grudges are about forgiveness. The lack of forgiveness.
Which, any self-help book would tell me, can be turned inward. I can’t let go of the grudges I have against others, because I have so many of my own against myself. That part I know and have always known to be true.
Even for the tiniest of things. Like the way I talked to a guy that I liked. Or what I said or didn't say to the person I called my best friend.
It won’t keep me up at night. But damn, I will turn over in the middle of the night and it’ll all come back to me. I’ll cringe. And I’ll shake my head to clear the thought, then I’ll go back to sleep. Nevertheless it still happens. I still can’t let go of the grudges I have against myself.
In this day and age, we call that cringe. Looking back on your younger self and berating whatever it was that you liked, how you dressed, who you hung out with, what you did.
Did you ever watch My Mad Fat Diary? This connects to what I’m talking about I promise.
It’s a show that follows a plus sized teenage girl as she navigates adolescence in the UK. I’ve watched the show twice in my lifetime, it still hits to this day. But there’s a scene that rocked me to my core a couple of years ago.
The main character thinks poorly of herself, which is part of the main conflict, and her therapist asks her what those thoughts are. She says them without hesitation and with passion too. Then her therapist asks if she would say that to a younger version of herself.
She can’t. She starts crying. She can’t say that to a little girl.
This goes to all the viral posts online about healing your inner child that have been going around. Having a Mario brothers birthday party at the age of 27 isn’t childish, it’s getting something you’ve always wanted.
So I guess to relate it back to me, I’m working on my forgiveness. On forgiving others, and forgiving myself for the mistakes that add up to me being a human being. It helps when I think about how I used to look like in elementary school and middle school and high school.
Those girls, I would go to the ends of the earth for to protect. Those girls I know how to do that, because I was those girls. I was seven, I was twelve, I was sixteen. I was all of them and all of them are still me.
At seven years old I loved dressing up like a mermaid, and at twelve years old I loved that dramatic side part in my hair, and at sixteen years old I loved all those horrible graphic t-shirts from Forever 21.
The sooner I start forgiving those girls, the sooner I forgive myself. And the sooner I can forgive those I hold grudges against. Or maybe that’s how it works when I think about it in retrospect, and it still needs some tinkering.
But isn’t that what life is for? Some tinkering.
