Sometimes, I imagine making a scene. Tonight is one of those nights. It’s the slam-off and I’m not there.
For those of you not familiar with poetry slam, here’s the abbreviated definition: it’s a performance poetry competition in which you perform your own work and are scored by judges in the audience. All year long, slammers compete and some qualify to slam-off for a spot on the team that will represent their city in the National Poetry Slam.
Mike and I met at a poetry reading, have written and performed together, hosted slams, run the National Poetry Slam three times. I trained his girlfriend to work as the Volunteer Coordinator when I was Program Director at Nationals during my pregnancy.
In years past, Mike and I have talked about the slam off, who was competing, who might make the team, who we had coached and were rooting for. Sometimes we competed. Sometimes we made the team. It was a big part of our relationship. I haven’t been there since Cavanaugh was born. But Mike has. So has his girlfriend.
Tonight I’m home with Cavanaugh. But I thought about doing something else. I thought about getting a babysitter and showing up at the club to watch, or yell, or maybe end up not going in because I was sitting in my car crying.
I imagined psyching his girlfriend out so that she’d screw up her poem. I don’t even know for sure that she’s competing. I haven’t asked Mike. I didn’t try looking it up. Whether she’d really be trying out for the team or they’d be running the slam as a couple or whatever was irrelevant. That’s what makes it a fantasy.
When I thought of showing up at the slam tonight, I imagined the look on Mike’s face when he saw me enter the room. It wouldn’t be good.
And that’s where the revenge fantasy falls apart. There is no retaliation for what’s happening. It wouldn’t save my marriage but it could tank any possibility of friendship or collaborative divorce. I would make a scene, make people (including myself) uncomfortable, and I would be acting outside my moral code. I would not be in integrity with my true nature.
Somebody else’s actions would be my excuse to behave in a way that is unacceptable to me. That’s a flimsy excuse.
I allow myself the fantasy, but not the action.
It helps me to realize I am not that person. I have to be able to live with myself at the end of the day and feel in alignment with my values. There’s a lot I’m losing in this divorce: my marriage, my house, the future I thought I would have, the past I thought I was having, my belief in who Mike is or what he would do.
But I’m not losing myself. No one can take that. Not unless I give myself away or otherwise betray myself. Instead tonight, I’m reminding myself that I am powerless over others and their -isms. That feels like a much more productive use of my time.
What makes you want revenge? How do you feel if you actually seek it? What keeps you from hurting back when you’ve been hurt?
Photo by Dark Mew
Posted on April 21st, 2010 in 
I have definitely had these revenge fantasies, I’ve even acted on them. It’s never good. I’ve showed places I shouldn’t have, gotten too drunk, said inappropriate things. I don’t regret things in life, I never use that word, but I know it would have been so, so, so much better to my healing process not to have acted on my compulsive desires.
“Sweet Revenge”… or so they say. I am not a vengeful person and I am grateful for that. There is nothing in my heart that wants someone else to hurt. I once, in the midst of a very unhealthy relationship had a rival for the man I was with. She would often call me late at night and when I picked up the phone, she would begin ranting, “You silly, little, cow.” She would say or “You silly, f@#$, B@#$%… etc.” I would hang up. I fantasized about lots of deliciously evil comebacks, lots of equally hateful words, but I never said any of them. I hung up. I hung up again. I hung up again. She told stories amongst our friends about me. She eventually took my boyfriend away too. I just hung up some more. I felt wronged and weak and like a victim. I kept hanging up.
Much later, she was a big part of my 4th step. Now, when I think of my whole life, there is nothing more like a vindication than the fact that I never fell short of who I was.
You are right were you need to be.
Good job staying home. It’s better not to indulge in such behavior. And whenever you can tame the thoughts…
btw…When I said meet him at work…that’s not at all what I had in mind!
No really…don’t think revenge…well think it then let it pass (like you did!! great job).
If you had talked with Mike beforehand about going to the Slam…that would have been good. If you are getting pumped back up to do poetry and slamming (is that how you’d say it?) then do it!
Just because you’ve been out of it for a few years does not mean it isn’t part of you. It doesn’t mean that Mike owns it. And it CERTAINLY doesn’t mean the other woman owns that connection. It’s yours just as much as it is anyone else’s.
That is/was you. And like you said you don’t have to lose yourself.
Wishing you a peaceful night.
Peace,
Kelly
Maybe I don’t have enough information, but I am confused. Why do you have to be the one to give up something you enjoy?
I don’t have to be the one to give it up. I just couldn’t think, read, or write poetry after I got pregnant. My brain stopped working that way. Then I started writing it again this fall and the week I was supposed to go back to the slam Mike announced the affair.
Mike has spent so much more time and energy there that it just feels like it’s his place. He’s there every week and I haven’t been in years because being home with our son was and is more important to me.
Not being there at the moment doesn’t feel like the big loss. Not being with Mike and not having the same communication with him is what’s hard. Sitting at home alone when he’s out at an event that we used to share is hard. In years past, when I couldn’t be at the slam-off, he used to call me from the stage and have 1500 people shout, “We love you.”
I got no phone calls last night. It isn’t something we’re sharing anymore. And he’s sharing it with someone else. Thus the revenge fantasy. I look forward to a time when I’m not thinking at all about what he or she are doing. I’m just not there yet.
Sonya,
The word “honorable” comes to mind when I read your posts. I admire your process of clarifying your values and upholding them in this time of turmoil. That’s some valuable stuff that will serve you your whole life.
Abby
Thanks Abby. I don’t feel particularly honorable about having revenge fantasies, though I’m proud of myself for not acting them out. I hope to get to the point where I don’t even entertain the notion. Mainly, it feels important to not just write the positive actions I’m taking, but the hard days and the angry thoughts and how I deal with those too. I am clarifying my values as I write about them. My whole life writing has been how I figure out what I think and feel. I’m grateful if that process helps anyone else.
I think revenge fantasies are a normal, healthy part of grieving. It’s really important to accept and value all of the range of your emotions — stigmatizing them is unnecessary. The difference between a healthy person and one who is “unhealthy” (or whatever we should call it) is that the healthy person experiences the fantasy, acknowledges it without judgement, and then does not act on it, but simply sits and observes its presence. “Just to notice,” my meditation teacher always said. “It’s a thought, just to notice.”
I think I like your meditation teacher. I was giving myself a hard time about Right Intention and how I should rid myself of immoral thoughts and I’m a horrible unevolved person for even imagining bad things.