Dear Vix,
Over 20 years ago, I used to help out on a racehorse training yard as a volunteer on Saturday mornings. The yard had a head lad called *Frank. I'm quite a shy and quiet person. Frank was a much more outgoing personality and sometimes used to embarrass me. Other members of stable staff could also be rude to me – or about me. I became more and more insular and withdrawn, not really communicating with anyone.
A member of staff had a birthday party to which I was not invited. Frank asked me the following week if I had been invited to the party, and when I said “no”, he called me “Mr Popular” and mocked me in front of other members of staff. After a number of months, I felt that I was never going to fit in at the horse racing yard. I was always an outsider and an easy target. I decided not to go back to the yard and I quit.
About a week later, I received a telephone call from Frank who asked me if I had decided not to continue helping on the yard because of what he had said to me at feeding. When I replied “yes”, Frank said his conversations with me had just been “banter” – but I found it a lot worse than that. The telephone conversation didn’t end well.
In the intervening years, I heard that Frank had married and had two daughters and had become quite famous. When I see him on the television now, I can’t square the person being interviewed with the man who was so rude to me and some of the staff on the yard. They are two very different people. And while I don’t think I envy Frank his career directly, I do wish I had two very nice daughters.
How do I let go of my old grudge?
Can’t Let Go
Dear Can’t Let Go,
We’ve all heard of the German word schadenfreude – meaning the joy we take from someone else’s misfortune – but have you heard of glückschmerz? This lesser-known phrase is something you might identify with: for it translates to “happiness-pain”, or “misery from the good fortune of others”. It can also loosely be described as good old-fashioned envy; that horrible, twisting feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when someone you dislike succeeds.
The important thing to remember is that this feeling is very common – and undoubtedly human. None of us is a saint; we are all fallible – and at times, though we might wish to be more enlightened, we simply can’t stop ourselves from feeling those very basic human emotions: jealousy, envy, greed, rage, contempt, anger (and so on). That is to say, while these feelings are tough for you to carry, even decades after the event, they are very normal. I don’t blame you for feeling this way, and I would like you not to blame yourself for it, either.
But there are ways to get around it. While this man’s fame and presence on the television bug you because you feel you know a different side to him – a side that the public presumably don’t see, and that is eating you up – I want you to remember that none of us truly ever knows what someone else is going through.
Just this week, I had a personal lesson to learn on this when someone in my neighbourhood suddenly passed away. I hadn’t liked the man; he wasn’t particularly friendly and could be unnecessarily aggressive. But he died alone – completely alone – and wasn’t discovered for quite some time. The circumstances of his death and his isolation when it happened made me pensive and sad. I realised that I had (perhaps) mis-translated his loneliness for anger. I now wonder if the reason he was so aggressive was that he needed more support.
Which is all to say: we never really know what anyone else is experiencing. We only “see” what is on the outside – in your case, this is a man who (on the surface of things) appears to have everything: success, money, fame and family. He may look like he has everything, and arguably doesn’t deserve to, but I’d be willing to bet that behind closed doors, he is just as human as you and I. He has the same fears, the same sadnesses, the same relationship or family difficulties and the same regrets (and who knows, he may also think back to the days he was cruel to you and dismissed plain bullying as “banter” and wish he could take it all back).
Empathy will help you through this difficult place you are in. Compassion: for yourself and for the younger “you” who felt like an outsider and was poorly treated; as well as compassion for your “enemy”, too. And a philosophical awareness that we all make mistakes, particularly when we are young – and that even those who have everything can suffer silently (I’m thinking of well-known cases such as the tragic loss of the comedian Robin Williams, when I say this – with his “happy-go-lucky” character belying his experiences of depression, addiction and anxiety leading up to his death by suicide in 2014).
We don’t know how happy “Frank” truly is today. But we can separate his life from yours – and mourn the loneliness and hurt you experienced, while also moving on from it. We can honour all you have achieved and your place in the world, separately from his. We can recognise that what happened to you wounded you – and vow never to let that happen to anyone else around us.
One tip might be to write “Frank” a letter (which you don’t ever have to send). In the act of writing, explain how hurt you were, then, and the effect his younger cruelty had on you. Then, you can burn the letter in the garden. And let it all go. I have a feeling that you’ll feel a lot lighter after that.
Do you have a problem you would like to raise anonymously with Dear Vix? Issues with love, relationships, family and work? Email dearvix@independent.co.uk
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