Today I was at my counseling center on campus and we were talking through some stuff and I kind of just wanted to write it all out for myself. I started going back to the counseling center on campus this semester in order to work through some anger I’ve been dealing with. I don’t lash out, sometimes I yell. Mostly I just have everything simmering inside me. But I’m tired of that. I want to move past things. I want to get over this. So I’m back at therapy. (Although it’s a different counselor then the one who told me “Work out your financial issues and then come back to talk” last year.) This is only my second session, and really the first one with any kind of background established, so I was a little unsure about how things would go. But after talking for a little while, we determined that I really just need to forgive the offending party. Ultimately that should resolve my anger towards them.
I need to stop here and say I’ve got a vengeance streak in me. I’m not blatantly aggressive, but man, do I hold grudges. I think I ended up getting the majority of genes for that, because it doesn’t seem like any of my siblings really have issues with that. I hold grudges for years, until basically one day I realize that I don’t care anymore. And usually that works, except times like these when it doesn’t and I spend 4 almost 5 years of my life simmering with small outbursts every few months.
In truth, I feel wronged by few. Those few have either stepped out of my life (probably forever) or have metaphorically walked out of my life and aren’t worth stressing about. I made a post a few weeks ago about a message I received by one of these individuals. I generally am amiable and don’t care what other people do. But at the same time, I’m fiercely protective of family and loved ones. The people who have ever wronged them are generally the ones who get a spot on my grudge list. I’m telling you though, there’s two maybe three people on that list at any given time.
We talked about forgiveness today and, as you now know, I’m no good at it. I never really know when I’ve forgiven someone for a serious offense. For smaller offenses I generally assume whatever happened wasn’t intentionally hurtful and probably was an accident. That’s okay. Those things happen. This is one of those situations where it’s not okay. The offending party did intentionally hurtful and offensive things for almost as long as I’ve known them. When serious stuff starting coming out I was betrayed, angry, and just in shock really. That’s hard to recover from. I’m still obviously struggling.
Forgiveness is never about the offender though. You know how people say it just rots at you? Yeah, that’s true. My mom has an analogy for keeping things bottled up where she compares negative feelings to dirty socks. (I think grudges count as negative feelings.) So if you are (in theory) a 2 liter bottle, and you have this bad feeling (in this case – grudges)- a dirty sock, you can get rid of it and deal with your feelings, or you can stuff it in the bottle. Maybe you’ve been doing that a few years. Maybe you’ve seen some things, dealt with some nasty stuff. I can tell you, the end of sophomore year in high school was were a lot of stuff went wrong for me. For me then, give or take, that’s almost 5 years of dirty sock stuffing. Luckily in the last few years I’ve gotten better at not stuffing and working through things instead, so I could be doing a lot worse. But still, that’s a lot of socks to clean out.
Back to forgiveness being about the offended. Not forgiving someone does nothing to them. They walk away and never deal with any pain from you not forgiving them. Oh how I wish that was different. Not forgiving someone just adds filthy nasty socks to your bottle. You can only hold so many socks before you explode. Nobody wants to explode gross socks. It’s messy. Both for you and everyone around you.
That’s just stuff I’ve been thinking about most of the afternoon. I’m working on getting Patreon stuff ready to mail out at the end of this month. I’ve been doing some research and lots of notes working through the logistics of everything. Please check out my Patreon and support me! Everything helps a ton! Thanks for reading.
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