Now that I’ve had a few days to sort out my feelings, and I know it’s more than a defensive track, I feel like I did the day I met my high school bully’s mom.
A long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I was a fresh faced high schooler, my family moved to Italy, and I found myself in a DoDDS…that’s a Department of Defense Dependent School. There, as in most small schools, was a strict hierarchy of popularity that wasn’t based on anything like reality. Being aware of this, I was obviously “off the grid”, and liked it that way…but some people didn’t like that because if other people got the same idea that I did (which they did eventually) then they would challenge the hierarchy, and perhaps destroy it (which they did eventually).
At the head of this effort to place me somewhere at the bottom of the social totem pole, since I refused to aim for any position myself, was a terribly tortured young jock we’ll call Dick. He called me a bitch every day, though I’d done nothing to him.
At some point, being far more evil than he gave me credit for, I started to shake things up around him. So he convinced one of his friends that I was okay to pick on…someone who knew better. So this guy put a “black” in front of the “bitch” and found his head in intimate connection with a large English textbook.
Of course, I was sent to the principal’s office, and that’s where the whole story came out. Since it was a DoD school, what Dick was doing was apparently sexist harassment, so all our parents were brought in.
After meeting his mom, who was totally unconcerned with whether or not I had done anything to deserve it, simply that her son called someone a bitch, I understood where the anger and pain he was acting out came from.
Though that didn’t totally solve his problem with me, I was much less angry about it, which is probably one of the things that helped to solve it eventually. The other was that we both simply grew up, and he had bigger things to think about than what an ugly butch nerd I was.
I don’t take pleasure in other people’s suffering just for the sake of it. It’s just that knowing, not just guessing, that the people who have made me suffer, also suffer or suffer more, puts my suffering into perspective. It accelerates my getting past it.
I also have a probably weird kind of nice feeling when I’ve been a part of a lesson that someone has learned. It’s a kind of compensation for having been through whatever hell they put me though, to know that at least it did some good for someone.
All that makes it easier to forgive them in a natural way, and not a forced denial way. Then when I’m over it, I’m really over it.
…and what’s great is that with all that’s been going on, I haven’t really though about Feng Shui that much at all. That tells me something…that as I predicted, perhaps my attachment to him was simply chemical…that I only held on because it had been going on for so long.
Now it’s much easier to look at the whole thing more objectively. Yeah, he’s a nice guy, but he obviously doesn’t care much about me. Since the last time I saw him, I haven’t heard from him at all…not a peep, and I suspect he’s blocking me on messenger again. Heh…if he only knew how unnecessary that was.
…but he can’t know because he’s at the age when all the Israeli women who are interested in him are jonesing to get married. I’m not trying to marry anyone. I don’t need paperwork…but apparently he needs someone socially convenient who needs penalties attached to the relationship. If so, good riddance.
Maybe in three years I’ll see him again, and like all the others, he’ll tell me how miserable he is…whatever.
I don’t buy that “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone”. Someone should know what they have when they have it. If they don’t know then, they never really will…and if by some miracle they figure it out, they’ll also understand why they don’t deserve it.
But, just as meeting Dick’s mom adjusted my outlook back in high school, seeing BK again has been a good reminder. Now I can say that I’m 100% back in the saddle, so to speak…captain of my own ship, and in no way a slave to my past.
It’s been a weird year so far, but a good one. I’m curious to see what’ll happen next.
Recently:
- The Countdown Begins
- More Truth Roissy Can’t Handle
- No Going Back
- Do Cyborgs Dream of Electric Meat?
- The 80′s Return
- Reasons Not to Screw Up
- The Edge of the Cliff
- Former Fatty Syndrome
- Damaged Goods vs. Classic
- First Audience and Student
