Now, my last post was about revenge and how to let go of all the hurt we’ve collected over the years. I think a lot of us have been hurt by the words and actions of others, right? All of us probably, but some people can just let go of things much easier than I have been able to. That lead me to feel an ambivalent desire for revenge in spite of not wanting to take revenge. You know what comes with such an ambivalent desire to take revenge when we are people who don’t want to take revenge? Guilt.
That’s right. A lot of guilt.
Just like I collected all the hurts of the past, carrying that around also created an increasing amount of guilt. I am not a person who can take revenge for past grievances, but since I couldn’t let it go either, I was trapped in a cage of my own creation. One moment suffering from the pain and hurt I couldn’t let go of and the other being angry and disappointed in myself because I had such horrible feelings inside of me.
In time, when I started letting go of the need to have those who hurt me suffer like I did, I realised that the feeling of guilt had become so entangled with the pain and frustration that I had not even noticed. I feel silly thinking about all the years I wasted caught in all these negative emotions and negative self-talk but getting free now is not too late. It never is.
Many years ago, when I was a young girl who had just been accepted to university, I was very involved in student politics, student government and such things. I had been president of my student council in high school. I had been a part of pretty much all part of student government I could and was chosen as the student representative on the school board – it was quite a big deal. I quickly realised that, even though I was pretty good at these kinds of things, I had little taste for being the face of everything. I preferred sending my vice president to deal with things after telling her what needed to be done. During my time in high school all these activities earned me the nickname ‘Chairman Mao’, but I never understood why or where that came from. I fear those who gave me that name did not like me very much.
All this meant that when I started university, although I was not willing to give up participating in student government, I was not willing to be president again. The first position that opened op on the council was treasurer and I was soon elected treasurer – a position I held all through my bachelor only ending when I stepped back before going on exchange to Japan. By then, I had had enough and since then I’ve not been a part of anything like that again.
When I became treasurer, I got exactly what I wanted; great influence, but not as much responsibility. I was able to sit on many different councils at different levels at my university and it was all a wonderful experience, albeit the harder I worked, the more I realised how little we were actually able to do. It felt like no matter how hard we fought we could not even buy a copying machine (with our own money) when the one at university broke and they refused to allocate money for a new one – meaning we all had to find alternative places to copy things.
The student council president that was chosen soon after I had become settled as treasurer was a boy I knew because we were in most of the same classes in the same year. I’ll call him Wunderkind because he was everyone’s favourite. The teachers loved him, the guys wanted to be best friends with him and girls all fell head over heels for him. I hate him a little for the fact that he never seemed to try and yet everyone loved, whereas I struggled and fought to make people just like me a little and no one did.
We didn’t get on very well at first, maybe we were both prejudiced about the other because we were very different types of people. So, it very much came as a surprise that we worked very well together for a while. We learned to utilize our strength and I mistakenly thought we became friends as well.
I am a very loyal person and with him as president I was the second in command – or that’s how it felt to me. I got exactly the role I had always wanted. I had influence, yet he carried the main responsibility. I did a lot of the hard work, but whenever needed he would step in and help me out.
A lot of things happened, but it turned out he had always hated me. He told me so several times during the latter part of our friendship, because after a few years of what I thought was friendship, it seemed impossible for me to understand or believe. In the end, he made things very clear and I made sure to stay away from him after that – which was easy because I was going to Japan on exchange.
The thing is, he had all the things I wanted, but something odd happened and it made me feel both guilt and anger towards him even to this day.
I had come to accept that Wunderkind got everything, in part because he acted like it was his birth right. Like he was a prince and the world should bend to his will. Not once was he considerate of my feelings, but I suppose that makes sense.
We both applied to go abroad on exchange around the same time, back then we even supported each other during the process. Wunderkind had been specifically chosen by one of our professors for a very fancy scholarship, practically been promised to get it as well as getting into one of the top universities in Japan. I had… well, not received any particular support from teachers or even from my friends at the time. But, when the letters came, not only had I been accepted, but I had also received a single, small scholarship from the university. The university I got into in Japan was not fancy, but it was still well respected, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Wunderkind, however, didn’t get anything.
He called me after he received his letter and I will never forget the shock in his voice when he heard I had been accepted to go on exchange when he hadn’t. He applied again and was given another placement that had not been given away initially, but it had already started. He was different towards me, unkinder and we worked less and less together. We both, believe it or not, got concussed around the same time as well. I was lucky, compared to him, even though I couldn’t focus on reading for more than 6 months before I started getting better. I left for Japan, however, and did well in classes for the first time in my life.
He was still sick when I accidentally ran into him a few years back, still struggling in every way. I couldn’t understand my feelings, because I felt so hurt by him and yet felt so guilty as well. I couldn’t tell when I met him, because I often need a long time to understand my own feelings. I tried to help him in whatever way I could, but I also struggled against helping him and I am sure I must have seemed very half-hearted and strange in our interactions.
It wasn’t until a few days ago that I started to realise what I had felt and understood the complex mix of emotions I had felt since I was accepted while he had not.
I’ve long wanted to apply for the very scholarship that he had applied for, even though it never crossed my mind before to apply to the same university, I felt horrible when the thought suddenly occurred to me. You see, when I was in Tokyo during my masters, it was my second time on exchange, I had a professor I respect very much and he was an alumni of the same university Wunderkind wanted to attend. My professor brought a few of us, his students, on a tour of the university and I was immediately charmed by it and the area it was located in.
I’ve always wanted to write a PhD, because burying myself in research for years sounds like a dream come true to me. I just don’t have the money to go. So, the idea came to me to try out for that scholarship that I had always thought about applying for and maybe asking my previous professor if he would write a letter of recommendation to the university that he had taken us to see. I was horrified by my own idea, because it became clear I could never do that. It was his scholarship, his school, his everything.
I have, for the past ten years, carried the belief with me that I stole his life. If I tried, even just tried, getting what I wanted, then I was being greedy and even more cruel to him. I even got better from the concussion before him. I stole everything from him.
How stupid have I been?
I didn’t steal his place when we were applying to go on exchange, because even though we were both applying for exchange, we were applying for different places. He was arrogant and assumed he would get everything he had been promised and didn’t work hard enough, I wrote a great application and was accepted because I worked very hard.
If I apply to the scholarship and the university, he had intended for himself, I don’t know if I will yet, then I am not stealing his life. This is my life and I get to do what makes me happy. Whatever happened to Wunderkind, I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. His life is not my responsibility. My life is my responsibility, that’s all.
I couldn’t let go of my frustration and the need to see him hurt like I did, because it was during those days he hurt me very deeply, that I got what he didn’t for the first time. The emotions of guilt because I felt I stole his place mingled with anger at him lying to me for years. I was his most loyal second in command, his friend, and he threw me aside without any thought or regret telling me he had always hated me, which made me feel so used and mistreated.
Now, knowing my own heart at the time, I feel I can finally let go of both the guilt and the hurt.
Have you ever experienced this kind of thing? When guilt mixes with anger and you suddenly can’t tell them apart? When feelings get to entangled we might need to understand them all separately in order to let go of them all together.
