I’m a forgiving person. I’m not vengeful. I hold very few grudges…and then only momentarily. They’re usually gone by the next day.

 

But today I got something off my chest that has been nagging at me for almost a year, off and on!  I feel enormously relieved and satisfied for having done the right thing at long last. (Although, in actuality, I’ve been doing the right thing all along; the people I’m about to introduce to you–without naming them, of course– just didn’t know it.)

 

Almost twenty long years ago now a dear friend became an estranged friend (if you’re old enough, think “Martin and Lewis”–rollicking friends who made their time together great fun for everyone around them for years and then had a great falling out that lasted decades). So when we parted ways, she began to imagine that I was out and about bad-mouthing her to our mutual friends as diligently as she was bad-mouthing me to them.

 

Her bad-mouthing of me got back to me by way of the grapevine, but knowing about her dysfunctional, devastating upbringing and her subsequent woeful lack of self-regard, I always let it go.  She needed our mutual friends.  I could always find new ones. So I felt “okay” being cast as the bad guy because my sense of worth and value isn’t 100% (or even 90%) wrapped up in what other people think of me–which is probably why it never occurs to me to bad-mouth people in the first place.  I just let people think what they want to think of me; it’s really no skin off my teeth.

 

But not long ago I posted an autographed photo of DeForest Kelley on a Facebook website because I desperately needed the money. (A Creative’s life is feast-or-famine and I was in a famine place). When I posted it, my old friend and another friend to whom she’d bad-mouthed me weighed in publicly below the listing to say that if they ever sold anything from De, the money would go to his favorite charity, the North Shore Animal League, not to them personally.  In other words, they publicly dissed me for being “mercenary”. They appeared to want to make me feel guilty or dirty for asking for money for a valuable item.

 

Thankfully, De had told me more than once, pointedly, to “sell this stuff if you ever need the money.” I always told him I wouldn’t…but I ended up in a scary place financially (and will again, no doubt!), so I was grateful that he told me again and again to sell stuff he signed for me if push ever came to shove.  So finally I did that…not really wanting to do it but needing to do it… and these two comrades rushed right in to condemn me for it on a well-regarded, much-visited Facebook page in remembrance of DeForest Kelley.

 

It hurt like hell.

 

Then, just recently, one of the two had a medical crisis and posted a crowd-funding campaign to try to get DeForest Kelley fans to help her.  At first I was going to be just as unforgiving as she was, so I deleted the campaign when a mutual friend posted it to my page. But when it was re-posted to my page by the same friend the next day, I recanted, thinking “Two wrongs won’t make it right.”

 

The kicker to this story–which I can’t divulge publicly to anyone but the people involved–is that I’ve been these people’s benefactor behind their backs for decades now, even after the falling out. I never did take the bad blood seriously until they dissed me in public by calling me a mercenary. That was about  a year ago. And I’ve been ticked off ever since.

 

Until this morning when I decided to write them both and let them know “the rest of the story”–which, again, I can’t divulge to you, much as you might want to know it. It’s sufficient to let you know that I let them know I was not, never have been, their enemy and that whatever they’ve been thinking of me all these years has been bogus…and that, if not for me, something very wonderful would never have happened…something that one of the people has probably been holding onto as a lifeline ever since.

 

Making a clean breast of this thing has given me a new lease on life. It’s true: “When you fail to forgive someone, it’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” These two former friends have been doing that for years. I only did it for about eight or nine months, and it half-killed me. So I had to tell them “the rest of the story” and then just let the chips fall where they may.

 

I forgive them. Again. Whether I ever hear back from either of them or not.  At least now I know that they know the truth and maybe…just maybe…they can stop drinking the poison, too, and feel better.

 

I hope so.