Forgiveness Part II

So I've finally finished the forgiveness exercise. Fi-------nal------ly!
Just to bring you up to date, the forgiveness exercise is offered by spiritual adviser and empowerment coach Iyanla Vanzant as a way to deal with anger and bad self esteem and, well, mostly anger. At least that's how I viewed it.
The advice comes from Vanzant's best-selling book, Tapping the Power Within....When I wrote about it last time, I was exhausted and convinced I would be too tired to try many of the ambitious spiritual exercises she proposed. I made an exception, though, for forgiveness because--it's just been that kind of year.
So I embarked on the 7-day-long project. In the morning, I would write sentences forgiving as many as 35 different people (but often, the same people many times. We'll get to that later.) In the evening, I would write forgiveness for myself 35 times.
I'll admit to being a pretty angry person. But all that anger is wearing me down. Mostly, I just didn't want to relive all the outrage (along with the flushed face and increased heart rate) each time I thought of a particular person.
Here's how I imagined the experiment unfolding: I would write and write and write, and at some point, I would have a catharsis. I would wander into a vivid daydream of previously inaccessible memories, pause my cramping left hand over the paper and weep. Yes, yes, Mrs. Peterson (my first grade teacher) I forgive you.
Of course, reality proved to be a bit different.
At first, it was fun. I had a long list of grievances with people going back all the way to childhood. For a day or two, there was nothing more fun than dredging up the outrageous and sometimes embarrassing memories and flinging those names down on paper. Yeah, butch. You're on my list.
But by day three, I was becoming bored with some of the names. To fill out the 35 required lines, I started putting in all kinds of people--celebrities, elected officials--who I feel I have a beef with but who've never heard of me. And corporations? Are corporations allowed? Doesn't the Supreme Court think of them as people?
By day five, I dropped this as too cute and possibly not in the spirit of the exercise. I began to think of magic patterns with the numbers. I would repeat certain offenders at certain intervals, according to lucky and unlucky belief systems. By the final day, I just picked my top five. These were people who I still feel anger at more than anyone else. I repeated their forgiveness sentences seven times. Not recommended by Vanzant, but it's Biblical.
All through this, my husband was trying hard to conceal that he was sneaking looks at my list. One day he just broke down and asked me, "Am I in there?" No, of course not.
Who were the offenders? Surprisingly, by the end of the exercise I'd dropped everyone who'd done me some personal wrong. The ones who remained were all people who'd made people in my family suffer. Because I hate watching my loved ones suffer.
I never felt the expected cathartic moment. I'm not even sure I experienced forgiveness. At least not the Jesus kind of moment where you hug and cry. Here's what I did feel. "Yes, I'm thinking of you, X. I'm naming you, calling you out, reducing you to a few inky scribbles beneath my enormous hand. I'm taking the power away from you and giving it back to me."
Not exactly forgiveness. But better. And better will have to do.