Free Trial, Free Spirit

 

I have had resentment issues. For most of my life.

Not little ones or even medium-sized ones but huge, flabby, sweating ones that have belched and farted their way through my psyche for decades.

I have tried many things to deal with this. Meditation, yoga, writing down a list of names and burning it, repeating “I forgive you” as a mantra, thinking positively...the list goes on.

Nothing has ever worked and a few years ago I decided to simply roll with it. After many years of simply getting frustrated over my lack of closure on past issues, I thought “let the devil ride tonight” and decided to indulge my thoughts as much as I wanted to.

As a short-term fix this worked wonders. I even got in touch with a few people who’d wronged me via social media and told them exactly how much of a cunt I thought they were. Some of these went back more than 25 years. In 2020 I published a book called “6 of One” which was a memoir of the 4 years I’d spent at High school, along with 27 other contributors. We told tales of woe, and abuse and bullying and a generally dire educational experience and I thought this had vanquished my demons.

My problem was always that I had bottled up what I wanted to say at the time. I was raised in a way that specifically told me to “keep it shut” and that any and all answering back would get be streamed into a social circle of misfits destined to scrape at the bottom of life’s barrel. The way to the top was to button your lip, work hard and then the rewards would come flooding in.

That turned out to be my life’s biggest lie.

I recently read about the “spotlight effect” where we think we are the focus of attention when we’re not. No one is in reality shining a light on us and watching what we do, we just think they are. You could run down the street naked singing “Daydream Believer” and the incident would be remembered for a week or so at most. We are way less important to the world than we think we are.

My memories of the times I was hurt and bullied as a child, teenager and then adult were amplified 20-fold because a). I’d been specifically told that everything I did was being watched by those out to trip me up and b). I was conditioned not to retaliate, either verbally or physically.

Moving on was something that proved an insurmountable obstacle. I tried again and again to “just let it all go” but the memories hung around like tinsel in the carpet after a 6-year old girl’s birthday party.

I knew that if I could find a way to move on then my life would be much better and strived repeatedly to get to this point, flailing around like a scuba diver who’s just accidentally dropped his weight belt at 25 metres below sea level.

Recently a few things came my way as new ideas and yesterday they merged to make something that is quite frankly wonderful.

The Spotlight Effect that I mentioned earlier is not a new concept but it’s the first time I’d heard of it as an actual psychological theory. A YouTube video I came across while browsing at 2am had a guy who was VERY socially awkward put in situations where he was required to be noticed. They started off by giving him “flat earth” theory leaflets and making him hand them out to passers by (he’s not a flat earther). It took him 10 minutes to work up the courage to hand one out but by the end he was doing it with gleeful and, most importantly, unembarrassed abandon.

They then got him to speed date 10 hot, female models and ask them very personal questions (the ones that made me wince were “What type of porn do you watch?” to which the woman replied, without hesitation “Lesbian, it’s hotter” and the cringe-inducing “How old are you?”)

None of the ladies took offence and by the end of it he was interacting naturally and not putting on a mask to try and impress.

This video culminated in him walking up to people, while dressed as a chicken, and asking them to go skydiving. He finally found a couple that wanted to and off they all went...parachute jumping dressed as poultry.

Human beings fear being humiliated more than death, it has apparently been quoted.

Moving on…

The concept of unconditional forgiveness is not one I could get behind and still don’t. I’m not the fucking pope and rather than “Forget, forgive or both” I came up with “Don’t do either, just build a house next to them and ignore them”. Again, this served me well for a while but in the end the resentment was always there, bubbling under the surface. While I have calmed down a LOT over the last few years (Covid-19 ironically, helped big time with this due to the amount of time I spent in isolation, reflecting) and I haven’t drunk alcohol since July 2018, I still couldn’t let go completely...and it was very annoying because I wanted to.

Recently I signed up for a few “free trials” of apps or websites. Amazon Prime I use all the time where I live in Rome but, as I’m heading home for a week for Christmas soon, I got the trial for the UK version and have been enjoying free overnight postage on stuff to my mum’s house for a couple of weeks now.

An app on my phone has a very good sign language app. Problem is the free version sucks so I took a 2-week free trial of the full version and have been having a whale of a time learning the finer points of communicating with the deaf or hearing-impaired. I also searched for rude words, like I did with my my first Oxford dictionary at the age of 12, and it was funnier to see the brief video clip of a po-faced woman signing “vagina” and “poop”.

I then got sick of the intrusive ads on YouTube Music (seriously, it’s almost between every fucking song now!) so got a 3-month trial of Spotify and have been having a blast making playlists. “Uni Years” is the stuff I listened to from 1988 to 1993, when studying Law and has The Charlatans, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin amongst others. “Boyband Guilty Pleasures” has everything from the Osmonds to WhatsAnErection? to East 17 and Bros.

And then a weird thing happened….

Yesterday I felt something shift within me and I was able to completely push aside ALL my negative, resentful, chewing-the-cud, masturbatory mental masochism and not dwell on any of it. Any time anything came up I would say quickly “I choose to let all my past go” and the memories fucked off into the mental ether.

All day this was a joyous thing. I was free, for one whole day from my emotional baggage and I realised what that felt like...finally.

I had always believed that giving up completely on resentment would lead to this clarity and freedom but didn’t want to let go because there was no example, no free sample, no way to guage just how this would feel. And then yesterday I finally got it.

The description people give of feeling “lighter” in situations such as this is entirely accurate. I noticed more going on around me. I saw more colours. I saw landscapes on TV and today, when I went out for a 30km bicycle ride, I enjoyed it because I wasn’t weighted down with anger and resentment issues from years gone by.

I think something, somewhere had given me a free trial of what life is like without this emotional garbage blocking up my tubes. I am the most non-religious person I know, fluctuating on a definition somewhere between Agnostic and Spiritual. However I have always felt that there is something walking behind and next to me that keeps an eye out and guides me. Call it a guardian angel, a friendly spirit or whatever you want but I felt that again yesterday and this morning I said “thank you” and a voice in my head replied “you’re welcome”. I then said “you gonna show my what you actually look like?” and the voice in my head replied “No, but you’ll find out one day”.

The key was to simply lose all notions of justice and revenge and move on. I could never do this because I didn’t know what it felt like to be free of this pain and anger. Yesterday the “free trial” I was given showed me that and I have now decided finally to buy the full, premium app and just let the past go.

This only took 53 years but it feels so good.

Oh...and RJG. I still love you, I’m not ashamed to say that and even though we barely have contact any more, my feelings for you have never changed. Maybe now I’ll embrace my polyamory and have a few wives and maybe a kid or two but ultimately part of me still loves you and I always will until the day I die. Have a good Christmas.