Not sure why, but offense taken!

Long ago, I recognized the importance of forgiveness, to others and to myself. It’s enervating to be angry, and I’ve screwed up as much as the next person. God knows I’d have few friends today if people didn’t look past my foibles (I probably scored a 6 out of 10 on the ‘jerk’ scale in high school).

So why do I find it so hard to forgive people sometimes?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this. The issue is not that I get offended often (I’m hard to offend), but when I do, I can hold onto the anger longer than seems reasonable. Let’s use my dad as an example. My dad was a rough guy, and he often called me to tell me how much he hated me. Frequently, vociferously, and viciously, especially over the last few years of his life. I hated him for it, and I would refuse to call him for months as a result. Sounds like a reasonable response on my part, right?...

Except I knew he didn’t mean any of it. He was old, losing his sight, and living alone. It was clear that he cared about me and my family (particularly his grandson); and that he really meant no harm by his yelling. In fact, it surprised him to find out his yelling bothered me. I remember one occasion where I thought he had liver cancer, and I was literally dragging him kicking and screaming to his appointments. After one particularly hairy appointment, I grabbed his walker in a fit of frustration and threw it across the yard. The action took him aback. He gave me a quizzical look and asked, “What are you so worked up about?” He knew he was a jerk, but he meant no offense, and I knew that. So why did I get offended at all? Why was I so hesitant to visit him afterwards?

There are times when I feel like I developed a PTSD response. There were a lot of difficult moments over the years, and maybe I just snapped in a way that creeps into my relationships with others. There are also times when I think I inherited a predisposition to be snarky, and it manifests as a propensity to carry a grudge. I fall to this explanation frequently, especially when I think about my brother who can make my dad look like a pussycat. And then there’s a more interesting possibility, one that was suggested by Jeffrey Eugenides in Middlesex: that we sour as we age so we’re more able to let go of life and accept our own deaths. There’s a certain appeal to this theory, that holding onto the negative (like a grudge) is a natural consequence of getting older.

Whatever the reason, my inability to be forgiving at times reminds me that I, like most people, am often not a rational person. I’m trying, though!

So what happens if Emmett doesn't forgive me for dressing him up like this?