Thirty Days of Truth - Day Eight

One person who has made your life hell or treated you like shit.....

I'd planned on doing better here, promised I wasn't going to skip anymore days, but this one kinda threw me.  Am I saying that no one has been that "mean girl" to me?  That no one has treated me badly?  Oh no, quite the reverse actually, I'm stuck wondering who has caused me the MOST hell.  Who should be immortalized in the blogosphere for being a petty, jealous, infantile, selfish, mean spirited douchebag?

Would it be the group of kids who started the rumor that I was pregnant when I was sixteen and so naive I really didn't even know what sex was all about?

The principal who insisted I cheated on a test and made me take the whole class over again, who constantly rode me for every single little thing when there were only FIVE people in our graduating class?  The same woman who was consistently offering insults camouflaged in concern to me and my family?

Or maybe it was my BEST friend who stood by and pretended to sleep while I was raped?

The group of guys I worked with who had a $500 bet on who would get me to sleep with one of them first?

The owner of the shop where my Dad was electrocuted and died who played on the innocence and grief of me and my Mother to get out of paying us what his life was worth?

Maybe it was the human resources manager at the healthcare facility where I worked who was convinced I was mutilating myself and tried to have me committed?

Or the boss who still owes me almost $17,000 in back pay?

Maybe it's the pastor and his wife who repeatedly stabbed us in the back because of their petty jealousy?  The ones who caused my daughter to have an emotional breakdown?

Or the woman who accused me of trying to sleep with her 16 year old son because I was being a better mother to him than she could hope to be?

Ugh, I really didn't intent for this to come across as bitter because honestly?  None of them matter to me anymore at all.  Does the hurt still linger?  Mhm.  But.....I've put it behind me.  I hope anyway.  Sometimes I think I've put things behind me when in all honesty I've shoved them in the back of my mind and they come out to play when I least expect it.

What I was thinking about when I started this was something else entirely.  Look around in a bus station, a train station, an airport and what do you see?  Rarely is there anyone fighting.  More often than not, people are hugging and crying and saying their heartfelt hellos and goodbyes.  You see military families waiting impatiently for their soldier to get off that plane.  For the brother or sister or mother or father that's been gone too long to finally appear.  For the husband or wife or lover that you've missed more than you thought possible so you can feel their arms around you again.

When tragedy strikes, the cell lines jam with people checking on loved ones, hoping against hope that the person THEY love will pick up the phone and tell them everything's okay.

Go to the hospital and tell me what you see?  No one's fighting.  They're praying, hoping, pleading, rejoicing, sobbing, laughing, experience the gamut of emotions that have little to do with hatred.

I guess what I"m getting at is in the END, there's no room for hatred, or hard feelings.  There's only a certain number of days allotted to us all, and I've decided that I don't have the time or energy to waste on people who have decided they don't want or need to be in my life.   I haven't forgotten, and I'm still working on forgiving, but I'm no longer letting those people change my life.  I'm the only one who should be in charge of my life.