If Holding A Grudge Is Wrong, Why Does It Feel So Right? Just Ask Margaret Atwood | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

“A batch of group person died, truthful I tin really opportunity these things without destroying somebody’s life. Except for nan group whose lives I wish to destroy.” Thus spake Margaret Atwood successful a recent interview astir Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, successful a clip that has gone viral. “They merit it,” she says, of nan group she hasn’t said specified bully things about. Asked if she likes holding a grudge, she replied: “I don’t person a choice. I’m a Scorpio.”

Part of nan clip’s entreaty is Atwood’s icily sardonic delivery: you tin understand why a caller reappraisal of her autobiography describes her arsenic “a literate mafia don”, reminding those who person crossed her that she knows who they are, moreover if they stay unnamed, aliases pointing retired that they whitethorn good beryllium dormant by now anyway. It reminds maine a spot of nan writer who erstwhile said to me: “If you hold by nan crook successful nan stream agelong enough, nan bodies of your enemies will yet float past”. Not a Buddhist proverb, for evident reasons.

It’s that aforesaid wry acknowledgment of nan expected wrongness of one’s ain grudge-holding that makes Book of Lives truthful funny. From Atwood’s consequence to 1 hatchet occupation being nan immortal words: “Piss up a rope, wanker”, to her relationship of hiring an exorcist to banish nan imaginable shade of her husband’s ex-wife, nan female who unfairly labelled her a “homewrecker”, her vengeance is excessively hilarious to beryllium judged wholly cold.

Though is it revenge, to sanction and shame those who person wronged us, successful nan telling of our ain stories? There’s a conception that to carnivore a grudge is someway petty, and to a definite extent, it is nationalist delight successful that pettiness that has made nan clip of Atwood return disconnected online. Perhaps it’s nan conception that prize-winning, household-name authors should beryllium supra specified feelings, that location is simply a definite glee, not to mention comfortableness successful discovering that, for illustration nan remainder of us, they are nurturing a intelligence “shit list” of group who person wounded them.

I fishy that it’s much than that. In today’s therapy-led civilization of forgiveness, closure and moving on, base a grudge simply isn’t nan done thing. It’s each astir processing nan crimes that person been done to america and liberating ourselves from nan expected toxicity of our ongoing resentments. We meditate and effort to wish “loving kindness” moreover to those who person been sadistic to us. Resentment is unhealthy, supposedly, and makes america bitter. We are expected to “let it go”. But what if we can’t? Furthermore, what if we don’t want to? What if each this unit to forgive becomes an further burden? “I’m trying truthful hard, but I conscionable can’t forgive her”, a friend said recently, of her narcissistic mother. “Why do you person to forgive her?” I said.

Maybe I’m a agelong measurement from reaching enlightenment. I don’t deliberation base a grudge – which carries a intelligence load ­– is nan aforesaid point arsenic accepting that immoderate things still origin america pain. Besides, it is so death, not forgiveness, that liberates nan memoirist. Now that they can’t writer you, you tin yet person your say, without having to dress it each up arsenic fabrication – arsenic Atwood said she did successful Cat’s Eye, her masterful novel astir nan lifelong effect of bullying betwixt girls. “It was existent that parts of nan caller were autobiographical,” Atwood now writes. “I avoided saying truthful because nan main perp was still alive: she became a teenage friend and we’d kept successful touch. But now, she and her contiguous family are each dead.” The bully’s sanction was Sandra.

In Cat’s Eye, nan bully is Cordelia, and women who person their ain Cordelias still break down successful tears erstwhile they meet Atwood. Such is nan bequest of girl-on-girl cruelty, and nan nickname that reference Cat’s Eye provokes. My mother gave maine a transcript of it during my ain atrocious clip pinch bullies. Still, erstwhile I deliberation of my first twelvemonth of secondary school, nan image that comes to mind is that of nan dark, glacial toilet artifact successful which I’d hide astatine breaktime, and its bluish walls (I person ever hated bluish walls). I person had galore years of therapy. Like Atwood, I understand that nan personification who bullied maine was damaged. Understanding isn’t forgiveness, though, and it doesn’t astonishment maine that truthful galore group struggle pinch nan second erstwhile their bullies later scope retired to them successful hunt of absolution.

Atwood whitethorn ham up nan revenge perspective – it’s awesome nosy and fantabulous marketing. She notes that base a grudge isn’t an particularly charismatic point successful a personification (“I struggle against it, but not very hard”). At nan aforesaid time, her naming of Sandra doesn’t consciousness petty aliases gleeful astatine all. She avoided doing truthful sooner to debar hurting her.

To beryllium bullied arsenic a kid is to consciousness awesome shame, and to show nan truth is, I believe, its extremist antidote. As personification who has written a memoir herself, I cognize it’s a process that, erstwhile done well, is simply a continual enactment of self-interrogation: why americium I telling this story? You tin ever show erstwhile a writer is simply score-settling. In nan Book of Lives, thing deeper is going on, rooted successful nan knowing that a agelong life, moreover a highly successful one, will ever person moments of pain. It doesn’t mean that nan symptom can’t beryllium funny. Laughing is, aft all, each portion of nan process.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is simply a Guardian columnist