One Thing You Don't Know About Me

We were doing Deep Thoughts this week on my blog, because that’s all that’s going on in my head. Well, that and rearranging my office space, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about endless searches for London posters and the dull debate about whether I should rotate my desk by 90º or 180º. [Speaking of which: Sarcastro, I still have two posters for you...]

Anyway, we were going to be subject to a long post about how my life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would but that’s not all bad because I love my husband, have a nice comfortable home and enjoy my dogs. But then I realised that I could write that entire post in one sentence, and so I did.

I know that Ivy tagged me with that “what don’t we know about you” meme wherein I’m supposed to say 7 things people don’t know about me. Of course I think of that as “seven good days’ worth of blog material”, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t dive right into the soul-baring exercise and do all seven at once.

Today’s Thing You Don’t Know About Me is….

The person I outwardly resent the most and have the hardest time forgiving

I know this doesn’t seem very Christmassy, because it’s all about grudges and stuff. But I think we’ll rip of Dickens (like everyone else under the sun) and take a look at this Ghost of my Christmas Past.

I’ve had a lot of people who’ve upset me or with whom I’ve fallen out over time. A few (my boss at the bank, a co-worker at the travel agency) stick out boldly. But the one who inspires my most anger, who still makes me cry is….

My first boyfriend’s mother. Linda BLANK. (Blank is not her last name, but since she remarried I have no idea what her real last name is anyway.) She had 5 children, but the son I dated was openly her favourite. She had decided that he was going to be a pro baseball player, even though he was only slightly above average. She was a lower-middle-class woman who had been told by a Little League coach that her 9 year old son had potential, and so she spent the next 8 years of her life fantasising about riding his coattails to fame and fortune. I happened to come into Jim’s life at the exact same time his skills were being revealed to be as mediocre as they actually were, so she transferred the blame for his failure to me. I dated her son for a year and a half, with the typical breakups and makeups in between.

Our final breakup was in the spring after I turned 16, and I called him from my break at work to make arrangements to pick up a few things. Linda answered and began to tell me a long list of why her son “dumped me” (even though our break up was pretty darn mutual.) She was overjoyed to tell me that the chief reason he decided to end it was because I was too fat. Yes, I had put on about 30 pounds over the course of our relationship. No, I probably wasn’t the prettiest girl in the world. But there was absolutely no reason for her to tell me that. She then proceeded to go into a litany about how I dressed poorly and he was embarrassed to be seen with me in what I wore.

Keep in mind that I was having this conversation on a community phone in an office breakroom with about 10 people sitting right behind me eating brown-bag dinners. There is nothing quite like being told you are fat, ugly and worthless all while being watched by people who seem to find your one-sided meltdown of a conversation more entertaining than their single-serving bags of chips.

The conversation ended, I melted down and then went on with my life. Actually to this day I can’t remember what I did that evening. But as I’ve been verbally assaulted and physically threatened at various points in the last 20 years, I still maintain that Linda is the hardest person for me to forgive.

There you go. One down, six to go.

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