Pretending To Be Bad-Ass. (Revenge Gone Wrong.)

     Tonight I decided I would pretend to be bad-ass. *shakes head and sighs* I say "pretend" for a reason. I couldn't be bad for just one night. I'm technically a reformed bad girl, which makes it more surprising that I couldn't go through with this. I may or may not tell stories of my colorful past in future posts, we will see. :) For now, just know that this tonight wouldn't have been a big deal back then, at all. Now a days, that is not the case. I turned over a new leaf, and BOY DID I TURN a leaf. I turned it and glued it down with liquid nails, apparently.

    My grandmother on my mom's side is a narcissist, and a completely cruel, cold-hearted bitch. Which is kind of an insult to cold-hearted bitches everywhere - I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Right then. I've been having a hard time of it the last few days on an emotional-level. Last night, I cried like crazy. Tonight, I was angry and wanted to do something kind of naughty. My mom jokingly suggested going to egg my grandmother's house, since we only live a few blocks away. Then I chimed in that we had some corny toilet paper we needed to get rid of anyway. Turns out, she had gotten rid of it.

    Anyway, several minutes passed and that little Devil-Bryn on my shoulder quietly chanted, "Do it, do it!" and I started going, "YEAH. Why shouldn't I?! I'm in a bad mood, and if anyone deserves something bad, it's her!!" The little Angel-Bryn reminded me that it was illegal. With a roll of the eyes, Devil-Bryn suggested keeping it legal.

    I told mom that we should do it, but instead of egging and TPing her house, we should leave a package of toilet paper with a carton of eggs and a note on her doorstep. I typed up the note, and mom went to get ready. The note, I chose to do in rainbow colors partially because my grandmother hates that sort of a thing. Anyway, here is the note:

    (For translation purposes, I am re-typing what the above note states: "Hi there. We really wanted to TP and egg your house, but we didn't want to risk getting caught and arrested. So we decided to leave you this note with some eggs and toilet paper instead. :) Have a nice day... Incidentally, this font is called 'good times'. Man, is this good times. Could be better if the law wasn't an issue, but this is fun too. Don't you think? We also ran out of black ink, and I like rainbows. Don't you? :) Have a sizzling Summer.)

    I wanted to put a "yo" at the end, so, "Have a sizzlin' Summer, yo." But that was too long. Yeah, this is so super tame compared to what we could have done and what I wanted to do and what a lot of people probably would have done. I know. And by "sizzlin' summer", I meant, "I hope it's a blistering hot Summer and that your AC breaks!" I'm terrible, I know, but...I'm human. :)

    So, we go and get the stuff, and we also got chocolate. I can honestly say that this is the first time we have ever gotten the total of $6.66 on anything:

    You know...before we left the house...mom had ran into a fan and knocked it down. I remember thinking in that moment, "Maybe that's a sign that we shouldn't be leaving to go do this." and then waving it off. I had the same thought when the total came up like that. Like, "Maybe that's a sign that we're listening to bad influence right now." Waved it off again, though, because I was kind of in an, "I don't care!!" mood.

    So we get to her house and I get everything set up (oh, and we were listening to "No Apologies" by Bon Jovi for a theme song). Right, so I get it set up, and then we start to leave. Then mom suggests going back and moving it against her doorstep so it wouldn't fall. And mom gets an epic silhouette shot of me. So I'm feeling awesome and rebellious and  pumped!

    Then we start leaving again and there's this cracking noise as we pass under her Pine tree. And after a minute, a pine-cone falls to the ground. Mom jokingly went, "Maybe the tree disapproves!" and I was honestly thinking the same thing and wondering if we should take it back. But, we left. Came home. Oh, and it is 1:00 in the morning, by the way. So the neighborhood is asleep. Mostly. Then I start telling about it to some friends and start feeling more and more guilty. We justified our actions as, "Taking a stand", "Taking our voices back", "What she did wasn't Christlike, and we're taking the high road by not destroying property", and "The note is anonymous, she'll have no idea who it's from", etcetera. But this guilty feeling just would not go away. So finally I told mom that I felt really, really bad. After some discussion, we went back.

    I couldn't be "bad" for one night. I mean, what I did wasn't even all that bad. I felt bad-ass in the moment, though.

    I realized that we were only proving that we're just as bad as her. What we were going to do was really minor, and we were even joking about leaving toilet paper and eggs again in a few months with no note to freak her out. Psychological warfare. Honestly, what I was doing wasn't therapeutic like we tried to justify. It was just me being in a bad mood and wanting to take it out on someone, and I know that my grandmother is not an innocent woman. I mean, no one truly is, but she's one of the worst. I was telling myself it was okay, because it would be therapeutic for my mom who had to grow up with the woman's abuse. It wasn't okay, though.

    I knew a long time ago that I didn't enjoy being a bad girl. I told myself for years that I did, and...that's why I have a more colorful past than some others. Nothing super bad, but enough that I could have gotten into trouble if I'd gotten caught. I never felt fulfilled, and there was always this hole. As I've been doing my healing, and especially over the last year, I've more and more gotten in touch with who I am. I like being nice. No. I LOVE being nice to people. What I was doing tonight was not nice and I was sinking to an abuser's level. We weren't breaking the cycle at all like we've tried to do. We were just adding to it. Anonymously, yes, but still we were adding.

    As long as someone acts on vengeance-seeking, the cycle continues. As long as someone tells themselves that since they had a hard childhood, they have every right to make their children's childhoods bad, the cycle continues. My grandmother is the latter, and I was about to become the first. It needs to stop, though. There is an abusive cycle that has been going on for generations in my family, and my mom decided she would stop it. Me and my brother are supposed to finish it. We had to go through some neglect as children for mom to do her healing...and since we have healed before having our own families, our someday-children will truly have fresh starts free from the family cycle.

    So, I took it back.

    We went into stealth-mode (meaning, we turned off the car lights. You know, because a white van at 2:00 in the  morning isn't obvious if the lights are turned off) and parked across the street by the church. I quickly got out and ran over to her porch, keeping low in case she happened to be passing the windows. I grabbed the note and then debated on leaving the eggs and toilet paper. We didn't need it and can't use it because of my allergies, and she would probably use it thinking that it was just a really weird gift. Then I shook my head and grabbed the items too. We would probably be able to find someone else to give it to, I figured. Then I started running back.

    Mom said I looked funny, running in my fru-fru dress. (I had fluffed the skirt part out with a crinoline, you see.) And then BAM! - down I went. There was a split second where I thought I could catch myself, and I did, then the eggs started falling and I tried to catch them. I let everything go and fell forward, putting my hands down and turning my head off to the side, bringing one of my legs up to my stomach to brace for impact. I have a lot of falling experience, you see. Tonight it paid off. I finally achieved a 10 out of 10 for falling gracefully, according to mom. ;) I quickly got up and grabbed everything as mom came out of the car to see if I was okay. I said I was fine and to get into the car, worried that I may have made enough noise to wake somebody up.

    Shoving everything into the backseat, I went, "This is what I get," hop into the front passenger seat, "for trying to be bad-ass and then taking it back. If I had just left it alone, I wouldn't have gotten hurt. Man, who knew being good could hurt so much!" We looked down at my hands and one injured leg to see blood slowly oozing out. Oh how "fun". :) It really is not as bad as it could have been, and maybe would have been if I didn't have so much falling practice. Anyway, so we were cracking jokes on the way home. One of which was that the Devil must have tripped me because I wasn't being naughty anymore. Thinking about it, there really wasn't a reason as to why I should have tripped. I'm not saying really was the Devil or one of his minions tripping me. I just don't see how I should have tripped is all.

    Then dad said karma was a bitch. THAT'S SOME FAST KARMA. Mom asked when it would hit grandmother-dear...and then realized that maybe she was her own karma. She's one of the most miserable people we know.

    Real quick: Injuries~

    I learned some important lessons tonight.

    1. It is not up to us to take things into our own hands and do bad to those that we feel deserve it. Eventually, nature takes its course and bad things happen to them in their own way. Sometimes ripples take a while to bounce back, but if you are patient, the ripples that a bad person started will come back to them 10 fold. Ripples always make their way back to the source, and the longer it takes for them to bounce back, the bigger they will get. But it isn't up to us to do that for nature. We just make our own ripples. Mine bounced back pretty fast tonight. :)

    2. Revenge. It does sound sweet, and in the moment it is. But...it really does leave a hole in you. A hole that makes you unhappy with yourself.

    3. If you feel bad-ass, you probably aren't really. ;)

    4. Stay true to yourself once you figure yourself out. If you aren't, you won't be happy and you'll just feel more and more miserable. You may even start snapping at people when you wouldn't normally, and get a headache. (My headache is gone now, for the record.)

    5. It isn't too late to remedy a bad decision. Sometimes you can catch it in the early stages before it is likely to have been hurtful to someone, like we did tonight. And sometimes, it will be later after the hurt has been dished out. But it still isn't too late in those cases. Just come forward and apologize. It doesn't mean you are buddies now, and they may not even be receptive to an apology. But as long as you are sincere, you have remedied yourself, and it is now up to them whether or not they accept your remedy for themselves. You'll start to feel better either way. Until then, a part of you will feel weighted down.

    So that was my shenanigans for the night. :) My blonde shenanigans. I'm sure some of you are sitting here going, "Only a blonde . . . *face-palm*" ;)

Have a wonderful night, dear reader, and don't let the wee hours of the morning go to your head too much. ;)

Love,
Bryn

PS: I apologize for any offense from my swearing. ^^;; I am going through a phase right now, and will work on being better about that in the future.