Grudge

January 26, 2011 | 10:10pm

 This is not a post about my rants, personal confessions, or what is happening in my life. It's something that I want to close. I've made very big mistakes through the year that I would want to believe as the most confusing and chaotic. But no one can be blamed but me. After all, my wrong choices = wrong consequences.

  Let's see. How do I say this? Okay, I'll try to write this in a way that details are not that clear but I'll be leaving some to avoid confusion. I shouldn't be any more obvious about this. I've done more than the damage I can handle.

  I was in this place and during the first few days of my stay, I thought I was part of the family. I thought I was welcome. But then, as the weeks passed and many other factors arose, people started to treat me uncomfortably. I was all the same from the beginning of my stay but I was very confused during that time. I was once labeled as a black sheep from the rest and that I didn't belong. I felt that too, but that wasn't much a concern. I was more curious about why. Why did the treatment suddenly change? I've got this big ambush welcome and then no one was actually sitting with me during lunch? I wasn't expecting that the gesture be that welcoming but if ever they don't like me, they could've just told me, right?

  Telling someone about what you don't like about her is very hard, but it's better than making the person more confused about what in her made you treat her differently.

   I think it could've been better if I had been more understanding. I thought of the treatment as something that was purely against me. I was thinking egocentrically. It was like; this group of people is secretly bullying me and I didn't do anything to make them do that. I was claiming to be very self-righteous, like I have God and the whole upright side of the world with me and this suffering will then rebound on them soon. It was that bad but it never came to me that I had to change it. During that time, I was reading the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Bible. I was there, sitting and thinking that someday, there will be this ultimate retribution wherein all of them will be punished. It was very bad but because I got the wrong message from what was written, everything from there went very wrong.

  During my stay, what I was waiting for was summer. Summer seemed like heaven to me during that time. I wasn't planning to stay but because of this very confused attachment to a person, it was hard to actually leave the place.

  And so came what I deemed as heaven. Summer. It was very colorful, but it was somewhat complicated. I clearly disdained the place I came from and when someone asked me about it, I'd beat around the bush or sometimes give a very safe answer that was partly true and partly not.

  What I have here now is my brand new home but as I've said before, once you have a scar, it never fully heals. So when people ask me about it again, I'd reply in the same manner, or even say that I had a bad experience and I wouldn't want to talk about it.

  The worst part though, is when I'm at home with people who knew what (I thought) I went through. My younger brother would start with all his stories about what happened to him n that place because he still stays there. And because of that scar and that very egotistic perspective that I have, I'd sometimes tell him that where I am now is better and that what they have there is so little compared to ours. He'd just go silent, even though he was the one who was really bullied before. And sometimes, when I insult the stuff he brings home, he would just smile and say, "Okay na yan.". 

  And now is the time that I realized that that was me before. When I heard them talk about me behind my back, I'd just smile. When I know that what I'm doing doesn't seem so right for them, I'd just smile. I even had this mindset before: Every blessing is a reason to smile. 

  I'd want to go back to that person who took everything bad around her as challenges and that they're God's ways of showing her the right thing to do and the path that she should walk on. That was what's fading: my faith. Those times, I can say, were those in which my faith was the strongest. It was when I thought that everything around me was part of God's plan made with love and wisdom. And maybe letting go of this grudge is a big part of God's plan of making me closer to Him. 

  It's harder to believe in a truth that you thought of once as a huge lie than to actually believe that you yourself are wrong. I was brought up to do the right thing and to be an angel to other people, rather than to be a burden to them. Those people who were in that big part of my life may not be aware of my badmouthing them. And that truth makes it real that I'm the bigger bully. I'm the bigger backstabber. I'm the bigger sinner. It's the other way around and I have been trying to make myself the righteous one.

  And seeing all this clearly, I want to stop. Not mainly because I don't want to sin or badmouth anyone anymore but because in the end, I don't want to be that person who I despised before; the kind that made my life "miserable". I don't want to be a burden to other people. I also want to let go of this because I don't want to hurt more people. I don't want to judge them anymore if I don't know their story. Because I don't want other people to suffer the same fate; not bullying, but the state of mind wherein you never have peace because you think everything and everyone is against you, and although you can't admit it at that time, you'll slowly have that scarred ego that cannot be healed by anything else but letting go and faith. 

  For all those people who have hurt me and made me feel troubled, I forgive you even though I don't know who you are. I'll try my hardest to make sure that nothing in here is against you anymore. And to those who I have hurt, even if you don't know it at the time, I ask forgiveness. Thank you for the challenge, the lesson, and the experience.

"Resentment or grudges do no harm 

to the person against whom you hold these feelings

but every day and every night of your life, 

they are eating at you."

-Norman Vincent Peale

-forwhatitsworth-