Ah, sweet revenge

I’ve had several conversations lately with various men about how long women can hold grudges. I’m talking years, decades even. I know I’m one of these women, and I know how freaking long I’m willing to hold grudges.

After a while, though, I stop planning revenge. My grudge turns into a dull hatred, a negative reflex upon being reminded of a particular person. The way the mention a certain type of food can get stuck in your throat after you’ve gotten food poisoning from it. When I see these people face-to-face, I usually just ignore them, but not in an overt way. I may ask them to pass the salt, or I may say ‘pardon me’ if they’re in the way, but I don’t ask them any personal, direct questions and rarely look at their faces.

But I will admit to entertaining some pretty awful revenge fantasies. Although for most people I just imagine all their friends leaving them to hang out with me or something, there are a few people I wanted much more severe revenge against. One person I imagined not only hitting with my car (then reversing to hit him again), but I actually hoped that next time I saw him I would have something heavy and blunt available, like a shovel maybe, and smack him in the head with it.

I’m a little aggressive, I’ll admit, but I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone. I think part of the joy and freedom in these fantasies is that I was nearly certain I would never see this person again. Plus, those of you that know that situation understand how royally abused I was and how long (in years) it has taken me to get over some of the emotional (and other) baggage I was left with.

And if I saw him today? I’d still consider hitting him in the face, but probably with my fist instead of a shovel. If I saw him sleeping on the street (the place I most likely expect him to appear), I’d probably kick him, but not suffocate him. See? I’m maturing! Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be over it all enough to simply ignore him as if he were an otherwise decent human being.

Revenge!

A week or so ago I was looking through some old correspondence with a girl I used to like. Anyway, it reminded me of some of the feelings I had whenever the relationship or whatever it was ended. Basically, it ended like most of my relationships: she found somebody she liked better than me, and I was crushed. No big deal now, but at the time, (as I'm sure many of us have felt) I was filled with thoughts of revenge. Not revenge like "I'm going to let the air out of her tires, that'll show her not to break my heart," or "I'm going to burn down her home, then she'll see I'm the one," but emotional revenge. That is, I was miserable and heartbroken, and I felt that if she was miserable and heartbroken, too, it would make me feel better. So basically I wanted either her new relationship to end horribly, or for me to immediately meet some woman who was a million times nicer and hotter as though that would break her heart somehow.

Well, neither of these scenarios ever happened, and since I'm now in a place when I don't feel any kind of ill will toward anybody I can look back and say that it was pretty dumb of me to want any kind of revenge, emotional or otherwise. It wouldn't have made me feel better. Probably. But for some reason, we seem as a culture wired to desire vengeance. At some point in the future I'll probably have a girl leave me for some better guy, and I'll feel the same things. The only reason I'm remotely interested in going to my high school reunion is for revenge. (Psychological. Like if I was a millionaire or famous I could rub it in everybody's face that I hated). Many (of my students, anyway) would argue that the reason we're in Iraq is to get back at "them" for what they did to us on 9/11.

Where does this come from? Are we just a culture of revenge? Certainly, it's not just America. Look at all the great Japanese or Italian revenge films. Is it humans? So this week's topic is revenge. Feel free to take the philosophical route with it, but I think hearing people's actual revenge stories would be very interesting, too. The only revenge I've ever actually gotten is in poetry form. Or the time there was this girl we all hated in Tallahassee we called Punk Rock Amy, so I made her into an unflattering character in Weed Time. Not that she ever saw Weed Time. Or knew that we called her Punk Rock Amy. Or would have cared. She probably just would have punched and/or flashed me, which is basically how she rolled all the time anyway.

PS - This revenge thing has nothing to do with my most recent ended relationship, which ended on good terms. There's no ill will there. There might be annoyed will if I stub my toe on these boxes again. But that's my own clumsy fault.

PPS - The situation can basically be applied to almost every other time I liked a girl and she broke my heart. So nobody take this personally or anything if you happen to be a girl I liked and broke my heart at some point. I probably got some good poems out of it.

PPPS - Courtesy of Nick: