Ghosts from the past make me feel bad.

Today I got an email from a person in my past. A person I'd rather not remember, honestly. A person who brought a lot of heartache and serious trouble to my young life. After I got over my shock, I gave that person a hasty brush-off in my emailed response. But I keep checking my inbox today to make sure they don't try to provoke me with any more attempts at conversation. I have a nice stomach full of anxiety because of that unexpected correspondence.

As an adult, I can clearly look back upon my teenage/young adult life, and see my mistakes. I can see why I chose certain people for my friends. I can see why I shouldn't have chosen others. I can see where the path of my life became rough, and I encountered obstacles (physical and mental) that really broke me down. After these experiences, I had to change who I was. I had to move ahead, move past the events and the people that caused me pain and suffering, and in almost every case, my final decision had to be to cut them from my life completely. I stopped talking to them. I very clearly stepped away, and told myself to take the high road. How many times did I have to repeat that phrase to myself "Take the high road. Do not show them how they hurt you. Do not look for revenge."

Because, as you may or may not know, I am a Taurus. As a Taurus, I hold onto my anger. I am like that Ezekiel passage that Samuel L. Jackson recites during Pulp Fiction, "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."

I mean, I'm not the type to burn a house down or slash tires, but my anger can be so consuming, that I will not rest until that person has been hurt as badly as they hurt me. In my teenage days, that might mean that I get up in their face and berate them until they want to cry. Or perhaps I just manipulate the situation until that person feels the pain that I felt. I was crafty with my methods of youthful retribution.

But what I learned, especially during the time I spent dealing with the above mentioned person, is that vengeance is not sweet. Vengeance does not make me feel better. What it does is create such horrible feelings inside of me, that I can never move past the event, even when the offending party has been subject to the full force of my anger and resentment.

What does make me feel better is moving on. Being a better person than they were to me.

Every person who hurt me, or caused me trouble in my life, was going to have to face their own demons someday. And you know what? Every single person who ever hurt me and seemed unscathed at that moment, did eventually have to pay their karmic debt.

They encountered the pain of a broken heart, or a long stretch of depression or loneliness, or even ended up facing the authorities. Yes, I did hang out with the kind of people who were doing things that might lead to jail. They weren't evil people, but just the kind of people who only thought of themselves. They never realized how their actions could reverberate for a long time after they disappeared from my life. It all comes back to you...what you put out there, I mean.

So, today when I got that unexpected email, my first reaction was just a huge knot of anxiety. But then I tried to calm myself, and I composed a response that clearly stated that the past is the past, and some things are best left back there.

But it did get me thinking, it might be time to adjust the ol' privacy settings on Facebook.

I'll be taking care of that one, ASAP.