You say I am bitter. I am but not for the reason you believe I am bitter. And though I know I need not explain myself to you, I will. Call it…a simple matter of indulgence.
Yes, indeed, I am bitter. I am bitter because, as I stand here before you, there is unreconciled pain inside me that very few people could even begin to understand. I am bitter because all my life I have been thrown aside just like yesterday’s trash. Do you know what that feels like? Surely, there has been a time or two when someone dismissed you and made you feel absolutely worthless? Well, multiply your feeling times a thousand and maybe, just maybe, you will understand how I feel.
It was not just being forgotten at the mall numerous times or being left in the rain at school or even being completely ignored when someone else walked in the room. My bitterness is more a culmination of being told by my raving parents at one a.m. how much of a failure I will be, how idiotic I am, how utterly worthless and unwanted I am. It is being ignored by my parents until I was sixteen, when suddenly I became somewhat worthy of their attention because I could operate a vehicle and do their chores for them. It is being told that my college education must be self-paid when my “loving” parents gladly gave money to the daughter who ran away from home at 16 to elope so that she might escape their tyranny and to the son who publicly proclaimed that he did not love them. It is being the shadow of an older brother and an older sister, to find that when it was finally my time to be in the spotlight, it shifted directly to my adorable, figure skating younger brother.
It is not just about being in the shadows of everyone else or being forgotten. It is about being unloved. By the people who should love you the most. And here, no doubt, you will scoff. All parents love their children you shall say. Well, I can prove you wrong.
So, yes, I am bitter. And I am hurt and the pain inside me seems to be an endless well. You see my bitterness and anger and think that it most certainly is because of a recent event in my life. What you do not know is that that bitterness and anger is for everything that has ever happened in my life. And perhaps it would be the right thing to do to forgive and forget. However, to do so would be to deny my own human nature and, as Shakespeare said, “To thine own self, be true.”
So, forgive me if I am bitter and angry. But, now, please indulge me: how would you be if your path was anything similar to mine?
