LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE

When you are Mad as Hell and you Just Aren’t Going To Take It Anymore, you aren’t likely to realize that you might just be more than a bit out of your mind. 

Yeah, yeah, you’ll show them! Maybe you’ll even decide that you want to crash a plane full of innocent people so that you can prove you will be remembered forever.

Change happens. All the time. In fact, it’s the only thing you can be sure of. This time however, it’s different. It’s personal.

It almost doesn’t matter who wanted the change or why. It is happening, to you, so it’s hitting you where you live. In some cases, quite literally where you live.

You realize that no matter what you say or do, nothing will ever be the same again. A part of you is really, really sad about this. A part of you is scared about what this is going to mean. A part of you is mad about this. This part wants the other person, and sometimes everyone else you know, to realize that you are mad and sad and hurt and want/need to express this.

Most of us have lived long enough to know what we are like when we are really mad or sad or upset. In fact, when we think about it, we remember the last time we were this mad at anybody and anything. It was not a pretty sight and we know it.

I doubt that most of us, however, even at our worst, would kill anyone, (regardless of what we are ranting on about) let alone a planeload of strangers, our spouse and children, or other nightmares the news gleefully reports to us on a regular basis.

We would however, sometimes feel like we need to hurt someone back because we want them to know we feel great hurt and anger too. Sometimes, in fact, all too often, we just can’t keep our feelings about this to ourselves. 

Were we not this devastated, we might actually see this and definitely stop taking it out on ourselves, and definitely not take it that step further to the place where anger has no brains…and neither do we.

Normally, it is not easy to say the meanest thing you can think of out loud and direct it toward another person. However, when you are breaking up a relationship, you are breaking down something in which you and another person shared a lot of trust and feelings. Now you are rejecting or being rejected by this person you trusted with your ‘real’ self and it really hurts. It is human nature to want to relieve this pain or push it out.

If it was something from the past, by now you would be calmer about it, if only out of acceptance that it was not going to change and it is in the past. In fact, after a while most of us have moved on. Whatever changes, rebuilding and renovating it has taken, have already happened.

Now though, here we are again. Sometimes the scenario is all too familiar. You decided to try again and you stuck your neck out and voila, once again, you got hammered.

I know how you feel. I really do, know how you feel. In fact, I think that the recovery sometimes takes longer than the relationship. It’s not because we really don’t want to let it go either. Sometimes actually, we really do want to let it go and the sooner the better. Most, if not all of us, just can’t recover that easily.

We change as much as we can, as soon as we can, and not a minute sooner. If you think about it, you know this is true. Why it is so I don’t know for sure.

I know that my personal philosophy, effects my way of leaving people behind a lot. This is because I always wonder whether, if nothing happens by accident, then the things that happen to us and the people around us are there for a reason. Possibly we are meant to learn something. 

It therefore follows that, maybe even the people that we have problems with, or think we have nothing in common with, are really part of what we are supposed to learn from. Sort of saying each person is either an experience in our life or a lesson. This sometimes prolongs a situation way beyond it's shelf life.

This is something that I have to admit is probably always somewhere at the back of my mind. Even when I think that someone has to go elsewhere to work out their ‘crap’, rather than inflicting it on me; a part of me wonders whether I am supposed to help them.

Well, I’m neither a masochist or a saint, so sometimes I eventually wish them well (with no mean words or fingers to push them out of my life faster). Other times, I need to lash out and be angry and sometimes express it too much to them and, often unfortunately also, to anyone who already knows the whole sad story.

When I think of the above and the poor suffering supporters who are still with me, I feel like giving them a medal. Friends suffer with you before it happens, while it happens, and worse still, after it happens.

As I said, I’m neither a masochist or heading for sainthood at this moment, so the way I try to deal with red hot current anger is to think about it and not try and pretend that I either don’t care or recognize that I care too much to just let it go.

None of us wants to admit that we made a bad choice. We let another person into our life. This in itself was and is a good thing. At least we have the ability to let someone into our lives. I assure you, I’ve met a lot of people who wish they could do this. 

Meanwhile at this moment, we are not all that reassured and congratulating ourselves on being open to new people. In fact, it’s more like investing a lot of time and energy and money into a bad investment; we can’t always cut our losses and move on, even when we start to suspect we should.

The first person you are angry at is yourself. When you realize this, you can pause, even if only temporarily, from plotting your revenge on the one who you feel has hurt you. You can also giving a passing thought to forgiving yourself for having feelings or expectations and trust, for someone, who it turns out, was unworthy of them. Maybe you are right, they were unworthy of your time, energy, trust, friendship or consideration.

But guess what, if you continue to need to show them something, I suggest you slowly, make the change, as soon as you can, to stop directing your anger inward upon yourself or plotting to direct it outward in some gratuitous and fruitless demonstration towards them. 

Such demonstrations are the worst when you suspect or know they probably don't care anyway. Besides no one looks their best when their eyes are swollen from crying and black rivulets of mascara have run down your cheeks.

Instead, as soon as you can, show them that you really are better off without them in your life. Living well, really and truly is actually, the best revenge.