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By
Elise
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ My Thirst for Revenge ~
When I was in first grade, one of my best friends broke her leg. At first I was sympathetic and tended to her every need. If I had some candy, she would hold her pitiful cast with her chubby little hands and cry, “Gosh I bet my leg would really stop hurting if you gave me your candy.”
“Umm, I just have the one piece and I found it by the trash can, fair and square.”
“Ohhhh God, it hurts sooo bad! I got a pain and candy is my only cure!”
While the other kids looked at me like the big meanie who won’t share candy with the disabled, I grudgingly handed over my sweet bliss, wondering when the fuck that bitch was gonna get better so I could eat again.
Weeks went by, and with every whine, came her every wish. Children clamored to give her cards, candy, and play with her at recess, while I was left in the background as the jealous neglected bystander. The final straw came when one day, while trying to accost my best crayons, she knocked over an entire can of paint. The teacher came running over and asked who knocked over the paint. She pushed out her chubby chin, lovingly stroked her cast, and then pointed at me.
I indignantly sputtered, “I DID NOT DO THAT! SHE DID! SHE TRIED TO TAKE MY CRAYONS!”
“Now Elise, what do we say about liars in the classroom?”
Classroom: “LIARS GET NO RECESS!”
“That’s right. This means no recess for you Elise.”
While all the other kids played outside, I silently watched from the window plotting my revenge on that fucking cripple.
My day came the next day at recess. I was outside playing on the see saw with another kid, when the cripple bully came out and demanded to play on the see saw. The other kid jumped off immediately, while she hobbled herself on.
“Elise you have to go slow, because my leg still really hurts.”
I began to go faster.
“Elise slow down! You are gonna hurt my leg!!”
I began to go even faster.
“ELISE IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFUL I AM GONNA FALL ON MY LEG!!”
We went up and down a few times, as fast as I could possibly go, and then, at one perfect moment, when she was as high up in the air as she could go, I jumped off the see saw. Without my weight to keep her up, she came crashing to the ground. The crunching sound of that cast hitting the gravel lit up my eyes with vengeful delight. She howled a howl I had never heard before and while the teacher and children gathered around, I hid my eager smile that was just dying to come out and mock her pain. I wanted her to suffer. I wanted her to pay. I wanted revenge and I got it. God, was it ever sweet!
So sweet...
I was raised to the tune of “Turn the other cheek!”, but as I grew older, and people walked all over me, I became harder and cynical. I began to live my life to the motto, “Don’t get mad - get even.” I was revelling in revenge and it felt powerful. To me, revenge was a means to an end. I plotted my days around my hate, focusing all my attention on who was going to pay for hurting me and how I was going to do it. I slept with men to hurt my friends. I lied to people’s faces to further my cause. I did this and refused to allow myself to feel bad because I could justify it all completely in my mind. These people hurt me! They deserved this! The hate I bred inside was so consuming that it completely took over my life.
In the midst of the epitome of my revenge years, was the relationship I had with my ex boyfriend. Of all my ex boyfriends, there will always be That One. He was the one that broke my heart so completely that it took me years to get over him. When we broke up, I swore that one day I would get my revenge. I would sabotage his relationships, I would ruin his friendships, I would come up with a way to make him pay for what he did to me. But in the end, that day never really came. The most I ended up doing was driving by his house 50 times a day until his dad, whilst walking the dog, saw me and waved and I hit a parked car. I wanted to do something that would make me feel better about how horribly it ended. I wanted him to feel as empty and hurt as I did. A few months after we broke up, I moved away and he moved away. I started to grow up and what he did to me didn’t seem as bad as I was making it out to be. Time moved on so much that I could think about him and not ache over it. I could think about the things we went through and laugh. I went to college and found more friends - and of course people are fallible, and along the way I was hurt in more ways than I could ever explain, but my need for revenge was ebbing. I was finding that as I got older, I could say my piece, stand my ground, and then walk away and not be left angry and hurt.
Eleven years later, through the magic of myspace, my ex boyfriend and I found each other again. Well, more like I got drunk one night, put his name in the people search, and then proceeded to send him an email, being slightly aloof and incredibly witty, hoping to draw him in and realize my awesomeness. He saw the awesomeness and wrote me back. At first, our emails were a contest of wits. They always included a portion of who could out-funny the other, addled with a slight undertone of “I used to see you naked but we won’t talk about that because that would be weird.”
But then one night, he sent me an email:
I might be out of place saying this, I know it was years ago, but:
I owe you an apology for the way I left things. I'm so sorry.
And in that moment, I knew that I never really wanted revenge. I just wanted him to say he was sorry.
When bad things happen, our first instinct is to make them pay. It may feel good at first, but at its core, it's not revenge we seek, but rather we want things back to the way they were before. I lost someone so very dear to me because of a drunk driver. Would I love to get my hands on that guy to burn his eyes out and rip his skin off his still breathing body? Absolutely. But what will that do? It will never bring me back the one thing I want; her. She will never call me on the phone again. I will never see her face, save for still pictures that don’t quite capture the beautiful person that she was. That man took away something I will never get back, and my only solace is that he sits in jail. Was justice served? Not in the least. But the hate that I would hold in my heart for that revenge will only make me dead inside and yet change absolutely nothing. No revenge I could ever extract on him will ever be enough to make things even. I will never forget. I will never forgive. But I want to move on and I want to have peace.
Some things I did out of revenge I can laugh about. Some things I did were just stupid. And some things I did I regret more than I can possibly say, but I accept that it was a part of who I was and now I am no longer that person.
Now I can move on, let go... and live.
