I'm not even sure there hasn't been substantial improvement on that front, either. See, I just used a double negative to state a possible positive development in my situation. I mean to say that things might have actually improved for me these past several weeks. Some weeks ago I sent issue number nine of my autobiographical Richy Vegas comic book to a male friend. I wonder if maybe his wife got hold of it at some point, saw that it was about a particularly trying time in my life- the part about people having dirt on me, remember?- and the events and people in that book, and how they treated me, and how things went for me, over and over again, might have struck a sympathetic chord with her. I wonder if maybe my male friend's wife didn't become a vociferous advocate for my position in defiance of the consensus view that I'm some incorrigible piece of shit with no hope of ever appearing as anything other than the picture so many on that side the fence wanted to paint of me.
Oh well, just some idle thoughts on my part, maybe. If a grain of truth exists in what I wrote in the above paragraph about my male friend's wife (who is also my friend) taking up the role of advocate for my position and interests against my self-appointed adversaries, then that would earn that couple admittance into The League, for sure. If the powers that be made the decision to grant these two admittance into The League, then I don't expect much in the way of open, frank talk about the book I sent them. That is, he and maybe she might say they read it, but they won't own up to anything I've speculated on in the previous paragraph about the wife possibly advocating for me in some way. I don't have a problem with that, that's the ways of The League. I'll just say here that I apparently picked the right people to send that book to read.
I'm getting pretty good at this. By "this," I mean making lots and lots of people look like total assholes for all of the grief and trouble they've brought to my door. I guess this skill-set comes from the knowledge that, no matter how much pain people like this wish to inflict on me, they always wind up looking and feeling like total assholes for their trouble. The secret for me resides in my ability to not allow them to inflict much pain at all. I think I've done a pretty good job of it this time around. There's a lot more of looking like total assholes for them, if they still want to go there with me.
That part about retaliation that I brought up last week. Yeah, about that. I have no desire to retaliate against any of these people. I find that my forgiveness- my willingness to not retaliate; to refrain from inflicting a self-adjudicated, "just" measure of pain and suffering upon my tormentors in order that they may "learn their lesson." Yeah, that kind of forgiveness- my forgiveness allows me to have an appreciable measure of peace in my head and in my being, rather than the usual anger and rage that inhabits that realm at these times.
I'm even trying to extend this restraint to "micro-retaliations," Like micro-aggressions, they are the little gestures and things I say around or to these people whenever I do see them. No dirty looks, no snarky comments, none of that, if I can help it. I may come across like Gary Cooper in "Sargent York," but I could do worse than Gary Cooper in "Sargent York," if you ask me.