Yes I Held a Grudge
Yes I held a grudge, what did you expect me to do
when the thing that was done to me was done deliberately
and it knew
exactly what it was doing and exactly what it cost
and the person making the decision knew exactly what I lost
and made the decision anyway, which is not a misunderstanding.
It’s not a miscommunication and it’s not two people landing
on different interpretations of an ambiguous event.
It’s a clear decision made with clear intent.
You want me to be reasonable about it, want me to see
the complexity of the situation and be free
of the clarity that comes from being the one who paid
and not the one who made the choice that had to be repaid.
Everybody wants the injured party to be measured and be fair,
and very few people want the injurer to be sitting there
accounting for the weight of what he chose and what it meant.
Yes I held a grudge and yes the grudge was relevant.
Yes I held a grudge and the grudge was correct.
Yes I held a grudge with my dignity intact.
The grudge was the appropriate response to an inappropriate thing,
not some failure of my character or emotional reasoning.
I held the grudge because the grudge deserved to be held by someone,
and I was the someone who was standing there when it was done.
Yes I held a grudge and I’d hold it again from the same position.
The grudge was the accurate response to the situation.
People talk about grudges like they’re evidence of personal defect,
like the healthy response to being wronged is to inspect
your own contribution to the situation first and foremost,
and process the feelings and let the anger be the ghost
that you gently say goodbye to at the boundary of your healing journey.
And I’ve read the books and I’ve done the work and my returning
assessment is that the grudge was warranted and I’m keeping it,
and the person who wronged me doesn’t get to decide what I’m feeling with it.
I’m not carrying the grudge because I can’t control my emotions.
I’m carrying the grudge because I made a series of deliberate motions
toward understanding
and then toward acceptance and then toward the door
of letting go, and what I found on the other side of the door
was a room where the thing that was done to me had never happened,
where the record had been revised
and the accounting had been flattened.
And I walked back out and picked the grudge up off the floor,
because the grudge was the last honest thing I had
and I wanted more.
The other thing I’d like to say about the grudge is this:
it has not interfered with my capacity for daily happiness.
I have a good life and good people in it and the grudge
is in its lane and doesn’t smudge
into the rest of my experience, which is its own argument
for the grudge being a managed and legitimate instrument
of the reckoning that I’ve decided I deserve.
The grudge is in its lane and the lane is mine to serve.
And what I’d like from the people who keep asking me to drop it
is to look at where the grudge came from before you ask me to stop it,
is to look at what was done and who was standing when it landed,
and to ask yourself if you’d have handled it differently if you’d been handed
the same event, the same decision made at your expense,
and see if your answer comes back as enlightened and as dense
as the advice you’re giving me about letting it go free.
Yes I held a grudge and the grudge belongs to me.
The grudge is focused, which makes it different from the scatter.
The grudge knows who it’s for and what it’s after,
and it doesn’t touch the people who had nothing to do with the original wrong.
It stays in its lane and its lane is the course of this song
about the person and the thing they chose.
And I’m holding the account of it and that’s how this goes.
I’ll hold it for as long as the holding is what’s right,
and let it go precisely when the holding stops being right.