Midnight Thoughts On Bitterness

Nobody wants to hear a twenty-six year old complain about high school. Right? That's a thing. It's almost ten years in the past (holy shit) and there is not a single adult person having a conversation with me that wants to hear me bitch about my public high school experience. Because it's over. It's in the past. What purpose does being bitter about the football culture serve? The only people that win when I whinge about the abusive teachers in a non-activist way is the abusive teachers. Because that is their abuse still having power over me all these years later.

I'm bitter to some degree about practically every aspect of my life so far. Twenty-six years of bitterness or thereabouts. Less, maybe. When did things start getting worthy of bitterness? First grade, when Ms. Peterson accused me of plagiarizing my Valentine's Day story? The day my mother told the principal not to move me into the gifted and talented class just yet because we'd moved from Colorado and that was a lot of change in a short period of time?

On the other hand, what's wrong with being bitter? If shit was unfair and I was wronged, why not retain that sense of pain and injustice? Is it really holding me back? What does it hurt that I don't look entirely favorably on my high school experience? Some of it was great, but a lot of it was complete and utter bullshit.

At what point do I lose the right to be bitter and angry about something that happened in the past? And what does that part of my life become if I do decide to no longer feel that way about it? How do I even go about not feeling that way? Forgiveness?

I understand that Miss Howell and Ms. Vernon and Mrs. Hitt and Mrs. Flynn and all the other horrific teachers that abused me in some way, shape, or form in high school had problems of their own. It was never actually about me. But the fact that it was allowed to happen, that they allowed it to happen, I find it upsetting. I don't want anyone else to go through that. But I'm not actively doing anything to stop that. I'm just still angry at them.

It isn't as though I am only angry. My life is a lot of things. It is not only bitterness. Must I let the bitterness go? Why does it have to be bad or unhealthy? Is it actually bad or unhealthy?

I can't imagine how I'd feel about those parts of my life if the bitterness and anger were no longer there.

I've heard it said that depression is a person dwelling in the past and anxiety is a person worrying about the future. (However, if you're depressive and you have anxiety, that does not mean you live in the present, strangely enough. And I should know.) So probably the fact is that I am depressed because I haven't dealt with the bitterness and anger toward my past. Or is it that my depression makes me be bitter and angry toward my past? Maybe it's both.

And to be honest, it kind of makes me bitter and angry that not everyone else is bitter and angry about their pasts.

If I somehow managed to deal with the bitterness and heal it, would I be a better me? I like the dark, dry humor my bitterness and anger afford me. Will I be less funny if I have an emotionally healthy regard for the past? Okay, probably not.

Part of me clings to it protectively. My self imagines a world without bitterness and anger to be a scary, unsettling, unfamiliar one.

Well, I'm no closer to an answer to any of these questions than I was when I started typing.

At least I don't feel bitter or angry about that.