True, I just think taking my anger out on them when they've been generally decent to me, over something that bully did to me...sounds kind of petty, y'know? They didn't hurt me. And that bully is dead. He ain't comin' back. There's no Resurrection Stone or set of Dragonballs to undo that shebang. Besides, if vengeance is what I wanted... I guess I already kind of got it. I'm still alive, he got to die of a horrible lung condition. I know it's horrid to wish acute fibrosis of the lungs on anyone, but if anything else, that should satisfy my vindictiveness, no?
Unfortunately emotions don't run on logic. You can know that he's not longer in the world and can't do anything more, but that doesn't erase what he did while he was around. It may feel petty and vindictive to hold things against someone who can't hurt you anymore, but those feelings weren't really doing you any good when he was alive, either, were they? It's not about what makes sense. You just have to feel what you feel -- you don't get much choice in that. What you do get a choice in is how you act, and if you continue to act like a kind, decent person, then no, you're not becoming something that you're not. You're just experiencing some turbulence. It'll pass.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Because you didn't get to kill him yourself...
That’s why we’re called writers. But at any rate, I haven’t been 100% honest. While it’s true he did do all those terrible things to me... he did welcome me with open arms into the business. He taught me what I know, he had a fiery personality in the company the defined the first year and a half and...I kind of liked him for that. He was almost grandfatherly in a way. Maybe that’s what I’m having difficulty with. A guy who could be a kind grandfather-figure is also a raging bigot who bullied me for being liberal and hearing impaired. I suppose in some ways I want to mourn his passing but I don’t allow myself to. I instead try to push aside all the good he did do and focus on the bad, as if that’s all he ever was. Making him a caricature. Is it natural to mourn someone like him, yet hate his shitty actions?
Yes. It’s perfectly natural. People are human. You can appreciate someone for their goodness (and hate them for their nastiness) at the same time. It’s okay. It’s okay to feel however you feel. You don’t owe this person anything, dead or alive.
Yup. I fully expect to feel that way when my actual grandfather dies -- he's a bigoted, bitter, narcissistic, entitled, abusive old man, but that doesn't mean he hasn't played a huge and important role in my life, and it sounds like the same case for you and this guy. People can be more than one thing to you.
Yup. I got someone in my family the same way. It’s probably more common than people realize. Sometimes terrible people can have good points... that doesn’t make their actions less terrible, though. Hitler loved dogs.
( here goes that moron again...) 'Getting over it' is not what actually happens within your head. Emotions filter through our lower primal brain to become detached in the upper memory. We can deter this process and make ourselves miserable, but the process still wants to happen. Millions of years has seen to that. Don't fool yourself into believing it can't happen. Get to the issue. pain in relationships comes in shades of two things: Intimacy and Trust As soon as you said grandfatherly it hit me that you had your trust violated. The intimacy was paternal-mentor respect etc. Everything comes back to primal family dynamics, and intimate community support. These things are under critical threat since the dark ages, but humanity has clawed it's way back (26 times? help me out). We are approaching an upswing to the new baktun (just a word for human cycle) and the failsafe protocol of the Creator will turn us to each other once again. It has already happened before. Simply ask yourself if you want to create or destroy. What do you want to do?
