You should have tried to apologize to him. I wasn't the greatest kid either. I was bullied a lot, and there were times when I did the bullying. I also treated some of my early girlfriends like total shit. I've been able to connect with most of those people through the Internet the past few years, and I apologized for my actions and behavior. Most of them have forgiven me and we're friends today.
They say that living well is the best revenge, but I think that's a misquote. I do believe it's, "Throwing a bitch down a well is the best revenge."
You're right. It's actually: "The best revenge is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of de vimmen."
Reminds me of the old saying: "Be nice to people on your way up; you might meet them again on your way down."
Being a dirty rotten cheater isn't being a "man". It's a fucking asshole who can't control his dick and doesn't really know what love is and doesn't deserve to be married to any woman of substance. If you can't keep it in your pants, don't ruin some woman's life by marrying her and cheating. Stay single and play your shitty games with the other players.
All kidding aside, there's not a lot that I don't get over. I married the right girl, I chose the right path, for better or worse. Are there do over buttons I'd love to push? Hell yes, but those buttons would have led to other paths, and I'd be hard pressed to say that they'd be better paths than what I have now. Those do overs are looked at through the lens of of who I am now, but guess what, I wasn't that person then, so really the option didn't even exist. I am not a fan of fate, the idea that our path is inevitable, I just don't see obsessing over the path that I chose.
I spent literally all last year, beginning on January 4th and ending sometime this past February, being pissed off and holding a grudge towards one person or another on my ship. Eventually, that whole "holding every slight against you" deal takes a toll, and almost none of it involved people that every gave two fucks about me. Why bother making myself sick over these shitloads of fuck? The biggest single event I've held onto was getting rejected by my high school crush...I think most of you already know the story about that. But even that, I've mostly moved past by realizing that I wasn't perfect and I shouldn't keep beating myself up for shit I did as a kid. The way I've started looking at it, I got the stupid obsession at sixteen that many get in their twenties and that a good number of who keep into their thirties.
Victims becoming victimizers is rather common, understandable even, yet never justifiable. Starting this thread I anticipated more posts like this, more folks having trouble getting over something that they had done rather than something that had been done to them. To me forgiving others is much easier than forgiving oneself.
A few things actually but this morning the fact that my city has decided to "punish" me takes the forfront of things that will likely end in me telling my city to find a place on my posterior to plant it's lips and move. If that happens I assure you I will never get over that. Other things later, I have to go make the doughnuts.
There are some who could probably say that I haven't "gotten over" Stardestroyer.net. I suppose they could characterize my intermittent harassment of Mike Wong over the years as 'vindictive', maybe even 'obsessive.' But to say so would miss the point. It's not that I'm 'not over' SDN. It's that, as some people are fans of baseball or football or a thousand other things, I'm a big fan of the irritation of those who have irritated me. I find it immensely entertaining and hugely rewarding on an intellectual and maybe even a spiritual level. And that's just the irritation. If I can find a way to ramp that all the way up to anguish? Mmmmm! Well, that's just the most delicious kind of delicacy.
I get over this stuff by hiring lawyers and destroying the offending parties and taking money out of their asses. That said though, the only thing that I'm still bitter over was my wrongful termination a few years ago. Yes, I sued, Yes I won, Yes I got money, Yes, the parties involved lost their jobs or were demoted as a consequence, but still... when I see those people when they pop up from time to time, I have to fight the urge to knock the living shit out of them. There are those things so vile that take such a toll on you that I'm not sure you can really ever get over them. Most you can do is put it out of your mind when all is said and done, and not look back.
Also, and this is purely as an aside, I very occasionally like to visit the homes of very, very bad people when they're away. I don't steal anything; nothing as crude and elementary as that. I like to do this when they're only going to be out for a few hours, not for days or weeks. And then what I do is, I show up with a few hundred, maybe a couple thousand packets of cheese powder that you get in those boxes of macaroni & cheese. And I like to take that cheese powder and use a toilet brush to mix them up a nice, thick, tangy, delicious cheese sauce in every sink and toilet bowl in the house. Kitchen, there's usually one or two sinks there, three if they've got one of those little island thingies. The bathrooms, sink and toilet both. I don't usually hit the bathtub itself, that'd just be extreme. Besides, why go to all that trouble when you can just unscrew the shower head, fill that sucker up and replace it. Sometimes it's about subtlety.
Wow. Not only have you proven that you're a psychopath but you're incredibly stupid. Just flush the toilet and pull the sink plug and voila! Mess is gone. If you're gonna fuck with someone, do it properly. Vaseline can be very hard to clean.
You need a girlfriend...or something! Sheeesh! But then again, how could a fucked up guy like you keep one. You're gonna be that old cranky man that is always looking out his window and yelling at people that walk past his house.
[action=Asyncritus]tries to figure out a way to make this the result of Packard's lack of reading comprehension -- doesn't find anything -- sneaks off to another thread hoping no one else will notice...[/action]
They can be related, though. 35 years ago, I got mad at a lady and yelled at her. We were both working at a camp in southern France for kids from a very troubled part of the city. I couldn't even remember anymore what got us into it, but I got mad and yelled and it wasn't at all good. Over the next few years after that (the next five years or so), I saw her regularly and we always got along. She obviously didn't hold it against me. But I still held it against me, because I knew I was dead wrong. Whether or not I was in the right on the issue I could no longer say, but I knew that even if I was "right," I was totally wrong in how I went about it. It wasn't just a clumsy way of putting things: I got angry and yelled, and that is never acceptable in my mind. I left the area and moved on and had almost no news of what became of her. I certainly haven't heard anything about her in 15 years or so at the very least. For all I knew, she might even be dead, since she was a fair amount older than me. Then, a month ago, I was back down to that same camp to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a couple who had also been there. (He was the director. I have stayed in touch with them. In fact, I have some of their grandchildren in scout camps today, since their group is one of the ones that occasionally participates in the camps I organize.) And there she was! Her hair is all white, but other than that she didn't seem a day older than 35 years ago. The same energy and everything. We talked about things now and then, and the day went without incident. She obviously was no longer thinking about the way I had acted 35 years ago. But before I left, I talked to her about it. I told her she might find it silly, that she probably didn't even remember the incident any more, but that I needed to tell her something that I should have told her 35 years ago and was too proud to do: I needed to apologize for flying off the handle and yelling at her. To my great surprise, she remembered the incident quite well, and even knew what it was about. We had gotten into an argument about how to deal with two particularly troublesome boys. Since she does social work there, she had continued to work with them. (That may be why she remembered the incident.) The one who had been the most trouble (remember, these kids were ten or twelve years old at the time) has spent half his life so far in prison. Things are not looking good. And then, to my even greater surprise, she apologized to me for getting mad and yelling at me! I had no recollection of her having done that. In my memory, she barely raised her voice. But since she has an extremely calm disposition (which I do not, in case none of you have guessed; I am used to being in charge and getting things done), perhaps to her that was as much of a problem as my yelling at her outright was to me. In any case, we both forgave each other and parted as good friends as ever (if you can speak of being "friends" with someone you haven't seen in 25 or 30 years). I was thankful for the opportunity to apologize before it was too late. I have said many things to many people over the years that hurt them much more than that (disciplinary actions in particular), but there is a difference between hurting someone involuntarily because you have to tell them they're fired and you know they won't like it, and hurting someone deliberately just because you want to get your own way. The goal of anger is always to hurt, and I was wrong. So I guess I can say that, after 35 years, I'm "over it." Not that it was eating my guts (I just chalked it up to another of those things I wish I hadn't done but couldn't go back and undo), but it was still there on my conscience: "You were wrong, you were mean, and you never had the courage to admit it." (And yes, long before I lost contact with her, I knew I was wrong. I knew it the next day.) My behavior was still wrong, and apologizing doesn't "undo" it, but at least lets the person know that I know I was wrong.
Damn - now I'm regretting something I know I should get over but it still haunts me: Hitting that Mark kid in the lunchroom way back when. I totally could have avoided that incident. He was my size but had nowhere near my fighting experience. The kid wasn't quite right in the head, and even though he attacked me first (then ran off) I should have laughed it off. But no, I ran after him and intercepted him heading for adult safety. I hit him full force in the temple and laid him out. He couldn't get up but was screaming like a wounded animal. I would give anything to take that back. I don't think I caused any permanent damage - I'm not very powerful. After that I only fought kids who were a legitimate threat, or the fight was agreed on well ahead of time and just for entertainment. I guess that's why it never bothered me to get my ass whipped - I figured I had it coming anyway.
You can't afford a " few hundred, maybe a couple thousand packets of cheese powder". But thank you for another example of bad storytelling to analyze for scientific discovery.
Says you; and you know that was some funny shit. Oh, you can tell me it didn't make you giggle -- but you know I ain't gonna believe it.
