“You hate your brother,” my husband said. He caught me by surprise since we hadn’t been talking about my older half-brother, Richard.
“Did I ever say that?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think so?”
“Because he hurt you.”
“I don’t hate him.”
“You don’t?”
“I used to, but hate is too big a burden to carry.”
Our brief conversation got me started thinking about burdens I’ve carried at various times in my life.
Unfortunately, my mother was already dead when I realized the useless grudges that came between our love. I had to live a lot of years to understand it doesn’t matter what someone did or didn’t do to you. What matters is how you choose to live now. Holding onto hate, grudges, and anger about the past are burdens too heavy to carry.
What price do we pay for carrying hate, anger, or resentment? We lose the opportunity to love people we will miss dearly when they’re gone. Too late, we’ll understand all that we’ve lost by letting these three soul suckers lead our lives.
From the time I was 19, I resented my mother for an incident involving her and Richard. During all the years my brother terrorized and hit me, I never told my mother. I fantasized that if she knew, and could protect me, she would.
But the one time she had a chance, she didn’t.
When she came home from work, she found me hysterical, my face red and wet with hot searing tears still flooding past my chin. I told her Richard and I had argued over selling him my car, and he’d kicked me more times than I could count. I pointed to my now limp right arm, purple with bruises. I insisted she not sell Richard my car.
Instead of asking how I was or hugging me, she said, “I have to call Richie.” Then she turned the opposite direction and left the kitchen as she headed to the phone in our den.
I waited alone, a hurricane of physical pain, shock, tears, and despair. Her heels clicked against the floor signaling her return. “Robbi says you didn’t talk nice to Richie.” Her tone was hard and flat, carrying the accusation everything was my fault.
I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. My hysteria amplified to a force five hurricane. “I don’t care what I said to him,” I scream-cried. “No one deserves what he did to me.” I pointed to my limp purple arm as evidence. “Don’t sell him my car.”
The next day, she sold him my car and bought him a brand-new sunroof.
I carried her betrayal throughout the rest of her life. It was one of a few experiences where I believed she’d chosen her son over me. I loved her and would do anything for her, but I withheld my unconditional love. I was enslaved by anger and resentment. I kept part of myself hidden and distant, crouched under a stinky load of mental charges I held against her.
Not until I wrote The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life, where I reexamined and wrote a full detailed chapter on the car incident, was I released from the burden of resentment and anger. All those years, when I even thought about that time, anger and outrage would well up inside my belly like a volcano ready to erupt.
By the time I released those emotions and the car incident had become just a story I felt nothing about, she had already been dead nine years. Having removed the cloud of resentment that had been the lens through which I viewed her, I was left with regret for all that was forever lost because I’d held onto such useless beliefs and emotions.
I live with this regret every day. I can’t change it and knowing that truth doesn’t always help stop the pang I feel inside for what I lost and can’t get back.
I’ve read stories and heard people talk about their parents, like they’re an attorney presenting a jury with their case, validating their anger, resentment, and even hate. I wish I could tell them what I learned the hardest of ways.
When someone we love is dead and we realize the wedge our own justifiable feelings created, it’s too late for the conversation and hug we now want. Being right is hollow after they’re gone. Writing helps immensely in providing us with an opportunity to continue our relationship, but it will never take the place of looking into their eyes, hugging each other, and saying I love you when they can hear it.
I could write other they done me wrong stories as examples, but I have no need to because I let go of the burdens that went with these people long ago. They did me a favor when they showed me who they were because they released me from ever spending another moment of my life force on them.
I don’t have a case against my brother. I still write about him because he is an integral part of my story. And although I never want to see him again, it’s not because of hate or resentment. I don’t want to see him because I’m afraid of what he might do to me. He never said he was sorry.
Now it’s your turn: if you’re carrying, or carried, any resentments or anger, take some time to write about it. We know writing is one of the best things for healing ourselves. And if you’d like, please share your story with us. By sharing, we help one another heal.
We learn from each other.
I understand the intention behind Catherine's comments. A little girl bruised with said bruises being ignored in lieu of giving a son a car is a big blind spot somewhere ... and that can't be fingers stuck in ears la-la-la'd away. But the best piece about this piece is that you chose to not dip into the hate and pain and, instead, saw a new way forward. We all are just doing the best we can do. It's hard to judge others when we all have our foibles. But I also care and love that little girl in you that was in pain. I see her. I know her. She's turned out well when many do not.
Another thought provoking piece. Thank you, Ginni. After years of resenting my father for abandoning us, his first family, in favor of his new and improved family, I finally realized that he is just a man, trying to do the best he can. Although I may not agree with his choices, I can appreciate that he did what he thought best.
We can’t control other people, only our own responses in this present moment.