Using Writing As Revenge

Sorry I'm posting a day late (again) but birthday festivities consumed most of the day yesterday.

Seventeen. I'm so old.

Not really.

Anyway...today's, I mean yesterday's, post is on Using Writing As Revenge. As you would know if you read the title. Which, no doubt, you did. Anyway, this actually coincides quite nicely with celebrating my life.

Revenge is such a slippery term. I don't like the word. Or perhaps, what I dislike is what the word means. I've never been a big one for revenge.

I became close with someone last year, which was a really rough year. We weren't close for very long, due to the fact that he decided that, for some reason, he wasn't going to talk to me anymore. This literally tore me apart. I liked this kid, a lot. We definitely shared some awesome times together. I think what killed me the most was that I had been waiting all year for someone to let me in, to be okay with me, with who I really was. When he finally showed me this time after time and I'd begun to believe him, he completely threw me aside.

Wow. Thanks.

My immediate thought was why, accompanied by feelings of sadness and guilt. Eventually, I got sick of why because I couldn't figure it out. There simply was no answer. This made me mad, oh, it made me so mad.

The fact that he could just come, be well on the way to being my best friend, and then stab me in the back and silently walk away, a smile still etched on his face...whoa. Like, dude, no. There's never a good reason EVER to do that to anyone. But the fact that he did it without a reason...or maybe he had one and I'll never know. Still.

I wanted to have revenge on him, oh, I wanted to get back at him. I wanted to break him like he broke me. But I couldn't. I didn't even know where to begin. And after everything that this guy had put me through, I still had respect for him. Deep down, I wanted to forgive him. This desire prevented me from truly wanting bad for him. That made me angry, too. How I couldn't be properly angry with him.

The thing about revenge is that it promises to fix our problems. It promises to make it better, make us better, make the situation better, and make the person who hurt us pay. We want to force the other person to feel what we felt, to be punished. Revenge is a twisted desire for justice. And the thing is? That desire can never be quenched. We want to exact revenge because it gives us a sense of power, of control. But we're not in control.

Eventually, I learned that there was nothing I could do to this person to make me feel better. I still had to wrestle with feelings of guilt and hurt and rejection. Okay, so if I could hurt him? Then what? It made me just as bad as him. If there's anything I know about heartbreak, is that it's unlimited. There's not some weird equality thing that's like "oh, well, now he has a heartbreak so she doesn't have to."

The only thing I could do with the pain was give it to God. Give the friendship to Him. Give my feelings to Him. Yes, it hurt so badly to forgive this person. But I did, eventually, by the grace of God. And not only that, I forgave myself.

We are given pain for a reason. We are allowed to go through tough times and God is right there with us. You are not alone.

After everything with this person fell apart, my friends and I concocted various schemes to "make him pay". We literally thought of everything and, not going to lie, I wanted it. So. Bad. All of it, every single revenge plot. But God taught me that revenge is not mine. I am not in control. He taught me humility in letting go.

But God gave me so many talents. He gave me the gift of writing.

So I took the feelings from the friendship. I took the stories, from when we first started talking to when he stopped. And I poured all that out into my novel. I let the pain drip my fingers onto the pages, I let them absorb my laughter. God used my writing to heal me. With each word I typed, pieces of my heart shifted back into place.

Use your writing as revenge. Again, I hate the term. Revenge does nothing for you, and that's what it's for in the first place, isn't it? It's a selfish desire to punish someone so that you'll feel better. But it never makes you feel better. What you really want is to be whole again.

Since everything went down last year, I've experienced more intense pain and way more intense joy. God is so good and it is so good to be alive and to be able to love. With each big event in my life, though, I turn my hands towards heaven.

"God, what do you want me to do with this?"

And I always end up back at my computer, typing away. Or with a notebook, pen flying across pages.

So write. Write your pain, write your joy. Make your stories more realistic by pouring in your real pain, your real joy.

...and just imagine sending a copy of your published book to the person who hurt you. The person your villain is based of off ;) Let it go and let God work. He'll use your pain and He'll use your words.