For me to accurately describe the circumstances surrounding this situation, I have to go all the way back to 4th grade. I had a best friend whom I thought the world of, was friends with basically everyone in school and hated being at home. A new girl started school that year, someone we shall call Annie.
Now Annie was a different sort. She was needy, loud and her mother literally tried to bribe our class to like her daughter by overstuffing See's Candy valentine boxes with even more candy. She told each of us that "there was more where that came from if we were friends with her daughter." It was disturbing.
Annie didn't like me. She wanted my friends, my best friend and someone to take her anger out on. And so she did, for two years. In that time, while I did not lose my best friend to her, I did lose every other friend I had in that school, and ended up gaining weight due to severe asthma, which only fueled Annie in her ridicule.
After she left our school, somehow ironically she ended up being taught by a woman who would eventually marry my uncle. Talk about a small world. As fate would have it, however, Annie and I would meet each other again our freshman year of high school. I remember having something resembling a panic attack when I saw her across the quad. In the first year, she spoke of me behind my back as usual, but also openly threatened to fight me; which thanks to elementary school I knew she wouldn't actually follow through on.
During high school, she dated the quarterback of our football team and angered a lot of people. I can honestly say I can't recall anyone with a positive story about this poor soul. She ultimately got kicked out of high school and ended up having the quarterback's son not long after.
Fast forward now just a couple of years. The quarterback and one of my best friends' from high school had known each other for years. Apparantly Annie and he hadn't stayed together, and eventually he married my best friend. In that time, as it would happen, I had a couple of interactions with Annie. The first was when she was dropping off her son to my friends' house and he ran over to me and jumped up into my arms. I was slightly afraid what her reaction would be, but she just smiled and said hello.
The second was at my best friends' new home. Annie came over to see her son and brought her other children. She was still Annie; talking about herself, judging everything, bringing negativity into the room. Somehow though, I just felt sorry for her. With everything she had done to me, I realized, none of it was as bad as what she had done to herself over the years. She was terribly unhappy. Her children were her joy, her reason to smile. She had nothing else positive to say about her life.
A few months later, her father died. At that time, I decided to let bygons be bygons and I sent her a card. Two days later, while camping with another best friend of mine, I received a tearful message on my cell phone from her. She said how sorry she was for everything that had happened between us, how amazing it was to receive only one card and that it would be from me. She cried hard into my phone and I knew somewhere, somehow, she felt forgiven. I left her a message saying just that and never spoke to her again. She died six months later.
At her funeral, no one spoke. Not a single person could get up and say anything positive about this person. I wanted so badly to go up, to try and speak for her; but what could I say?
There are many things that happen to us in life. Many things that cause us to react, to change, to judge. I had every right to hate her, to ridicule her, to hurt her back. But in doing that, what would that have said about me? How would that have made all my tears from childhood vanish? In the end, I chose to forgive her. Not because she deserved it, not because she ever asked for it; but because I believe that people want to be good. I believe that had she been raised by a different family, she would have been good. She was always smarter than me, she was talented, she was funny. She just never knew it.
The day I sent her the card, I was being optimistic. It could have ended badly. It could have ended in her "winning" as some would say. I don't live my life by fear. I find the one, tiny, insignificant spec of possible positivity and focus on that. And in that belief, I gave a girl who didn't know she had very little time left the forgiveness she so obviously needed.
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