I realized today that I have to do some serious work on forgiveness. I don’t forgive and forget. I might forget — as I keep telling everyone these days, I no longer have any short-, long-, or even medium-term memory — but I find it very, very difficult to forgive. I am probably not alone in this inability or unwillingness to forgive. That’s why most of the major religions, including psychiatry, point to it as one of the things you have to do in order to grow. And if it were easy, no one would have to tell you that you have to do it.
I followed a link from a favorite blog to an essay on another blog. That essay was well-written, it spoke to a lot of things on my mind, and since I am always happy to find new blogs I added it to my friends list over on LiveJournal. Then I looked at the name of the person who wrote the blog.
And my first thought was, Goddammit, I am not reading anything by her.
The blog is written by the person who was supposed to buy our house in LA. When I mentioned I was moving, she wrote me within minutes to ask about buying the house. We took care of everything ourselves, because, you know: friend. And with that, we packed up all of our stuff and moved back to the Bay Area. We got installed in the company-paid apartments and got ready to move into our new house.
Then the day we were supposed to close on the house in LA we discovered she had backed out of the deal. Did she call us? No. Did she have her lawyer (who was handling all the paperwork) call us? No. We found out when the title company called us and said, “Where would you like us to return these house keys?”
(My blood pressure is going up just writing about this.)
The purchase of our house here was contingent on the sale of the house down in LA, of course. And without a sold house, the deal up here almost fell through. Almost, because Darin luckily has very trusting (and very wealthy) friends who loaned us the money we needed on the spur of the moment in order to complete the transaction up here, and we managed to get the house in LA sold a few months later. But our move, already stressful enough, was made nearly unbearable. And if this house deal had fallen through, I don’t know what we would have done — housing prices in the rest of California might have leveled out, but they’re still increasing at 10-20% in this area.
But we didn’t have to do anything. Everything turned out all right. We got the house sold. We paid back Darin’s friend with interest. We’ve settled in, we’re happy, we’re in no way affected by what happened.
It’s been four years since we moved, and I’m still furious about what happened. I get angry when I hear her name. I don’t like to watch the TV show she works on because her name’s in the credits. (What the fuck does she do when something goes wrong on the TV show she works on? Does she wait for upper management to somehow find out? I doubt it. That level of incompetence or underhandedness or whatever she reserves for friends.) I heard a snippet of gossip about this person and felt a certain satisfaction that something had gone wrong for her. And I’m not the sort of person who generally feels schadenfreude, because frankly, life’s too damn short.
At least, I thought that was how I thought about things.
Darin puts this out of his mind. We trusted the wrong person, we don’t need to worry about that again, move on. She has her issues to deal with, we have ours, let it go.
I am trying. I want to find compassion and kindness to replace the anger — if for no other reason than to free up the psychic space. But wow: is that hard.
I get angry like that and its usually because I’m angriest at myself. Generally takes a lot of work to resolve.
Then again, I like holding grudges. Makes me feel better to brandish them about and vent.
🙂
I know what you mean. Forgiving others is so hard when we’ve been wronged. I once heard a minister say the key to forgiveness is to first forgive ourselves for our part in the matter.
Huh? Moi? Be wrong? Oh, contrare.
But when I approach it from that angle I, of course, squirm. Then I break down and admit my part in it. How I really feel about my involvement in the event. Then it somehow gets easier to forgive the other person – or at least not want to sledgehammer their head.
The minister said we don’t forgive others to help them, we do it for ourselves. They often don’t even know. However, we feel much better. It’s easier than carrying around the anger which makes us feel yucky.
It was the one and only time I ever saw that minister but damn, she was good. 🙂
Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable interpretation of events. That’s it more about me (me! me!) than it is about anything she did. It’s like when you think of someone who really annoys the heck out you — chances are good that you embody that very quality.
Is it possible that you did not follow up with her as closely as you might have had she not been a “friend”? That you were busy preparing for the move, and you didn’t make a phone call or two, thinking “Oh, I know it will be all right, after all, its so-and-so”. And now part of your anger is indeed directed at yourself?
(I’ve done this enough times, myself, that I should have learned from it, already. Sigh.)
Perhaps you have forgotten the old adage not to do business with friends. Not much to be done about that at this point though. Forgiveness will only come when you decide to pay the price and hold them guiltless, even though they aren’t. Easy to say. Tough to get through. “But for the grace of God, there goes me” comes to mind as well. Unforgiveness will blossom into bitterness which will never hurt the object of your scorn. It will only hurt you, and most probably those that you love move. Someone has to pay. Why not pay up today and say in your heart “That’s OK, I cover the cost of that major screwup. She’s free to go.” And then never mention it again. Push it far from you.
You’ll find an amaizing peace replacing that big angry hole.
All the best….
Scott