How long do you think the heart remembers after the mind forgets?

If you've been hurt very badly by someone, you go through a phase where you fantasize about every conceivable way of hurting the person. Physically. Emotionally. Perhaps even an examination of what ratio of physical to psychic pain you're after. If you're dumb, you act on those urges. If you're smart, you find other outlets for those urges. Like smoking. Or kick boxing. Or "good living".

If you ran into that person years later, long after you've forgotten all that crap, could your subconscious formulate a plan to finally enact revenge, without you even realizing it? Is it possible that you'd act on that plan without realising it at the time?

Would you remember the magic key to hurting them, and use it?

...

I have a former friend who once stopped talking to me in high school.

We'd sit around in the morning before classes and she'd push-push-push my buttons. There were so many things that she and I disagreed on at a fundamental level. Sometimes it was fun, but often it wasn't.

Finally one morning said those three beautiful words: "Fuck off, bitch." (or perhaps it was "shut up, cunt"... regardless)

She stood up without a word and walked away.

The next day I went up to her at her locker and apologized. Got nothing but cold cold silence. And so I figured the friendship was over.

About 6 months later she called me out of the blue. And I just let her off the hook. Just like that. Ignored the fact we hadn't talked in what seemed like a lifetime, and just made it easy for her. She later gave a half-assed excuse why she hadn't talked to me for so long. I realised the reason she started talking to me again was her new friend drove her bonkers.

From then on, we'd orbit into each others' lives every so often through university and post-university life. From occassional contact to sharing a house, and back to occassional contact. Eventually she moved out of the country, and we talked maybe once a year. I was fine with that. More than fine actually.

The reasons don't matter, but I eventually decided that I felt better when she wasn't in my life. Not even worth spending the annual "let get together" lunch. So I decided to disappear. Just gone.

She's called. She's left emails. She's left heart bearing voicemails. And I decided cold cold silence was the way to go. I rationalise it away with "no one wants to know what they did wrong when the "wrong" is just be herself... Anything I say would be cruel and hurtful."

But I know her pretty well. And a few years later, I wonder if my heart has decided this was the best revenge.

kat@adchick.com