I may be the kind of person who carries a darker side inside and remembers grudges for far too long.

In 2017, he and I were in the same chat group. We got into an argument because we disagreed about something. Other people in the group noticed the tension and quickly changed the subject, so on the surface the conflict ended there. But it did not end inside me. I was upset, and I assumed he probably was too.

After that, whenever I saw him active in the group, I would stop typing and stay silent. I watched everything he said and did, and in my head I mocked him, belittled him, rejected what he said, even cursed him. I never said any of it out loud. I simply avoided direct conflict while feeding those thoughts in private. That went on for a long time.

Slowly, dislike hardened into hatred.

It reached a point where no matter what he said, I could always find some kind of "evidence" to prove to myself that he was hateful—even when he was saying the same things as everyone else. I had already decided what he was, so everything became proof.

Sometimes I asked myself why I hated him so much. Was it because I believed he must hate me too, and if I did not hate him back I would somehow be losing? That made no sense. Hating someone silently does nothing to hurt them. It only becomes a burden you carry yourself. I had heard all the usual advice about letting go—let go of obsession, let go of resentment, and life becomes easier. I agreed with that in theory. At the time, I still could not do it.

About half a year later, something shifted.

Another person in the group, someone I got along with fairly well, mentioned me. He casually added, "He’s a pretty good guy. Last time, he was the one who gave me the idea that helped."

That "last time" referred to an earlier conversation in the group. He had brought up a problem he was dealing with, and other people had started discussing it. I did not realize the person asking was him, so I joined in and shared my opinion and a possible solution. Later he replied, "I’ll go try that, thanks everyone."

When I saw that message back then, I scrolled up and realized it had been his question. My immediate reaction was: if I had known it was him, I would never have gotten involved. I even convinced myself that his "thanks" had some hidden meaning behind it. After that, I stopped talking.

When I heard him later describe me positively, I went back and found the old messages from half a year earlier. I tried as hard as I could to reread our original argument from a third-person perspective. What I found was uncomfortable.

He had not been nearly as hateful as I had made him out to be. And I had not been nearly as innocent as I preferred to believe.

It had simply been two people holding different views about the same thing.

Maybe, back then, he felt about the situation much the way I do now. But at the time I had convinced myself that he disliked me even more than I disliked him, and that belief pushed me to dislike him even more in return—as if I had to keep escalating, even though all it did was make the imagined hostility feel more real.

That was when it finally hit me: I was the only one who had never let it go.

I had treated him like an enemy. To him, I was probably just some random person online, someone neither important nor memorable. Realizing that was painful. It angered me to think I had been so thoroughly ignored. At the same time, it also brought relief: he had never actually been holding onto resentment toward me the way I had toward him.

And once I understood that, I looked again at the gratitude he had expressed back then. It seemed completely sincere. The problem was not that he had been insincere. The problem was that hatred had clouded my judgment so badly that I had misread simple kindness as sarcasm.

What I felt in that moment was mixed and ugly: anger at being insignificant in someone else’s world, relief at discovering I had not truly been hated, guilt for misunderstanding someone’s goodwill, and regret for what I had allowed myself to become.

In the end, I was the petty one.

He was the better person.

By 2021, that group was long gone, and so was he. I can only vaguely remember the group’s name, along with his nickname and profile picture. I am grateful that I never expressed my hatred for him to anyone from beginning to end. But I still know I did something wrong. I once hated an innocent person with complete sincerity, and that itself feels like a kind of guilt.

I am thankful for the experience now. It made me less likely to slide into obsession, and it taught me in a real way what it means to try to let go. One lived experience can do more than a hundred comforting sayings ever could—though perhaps only for the person who lived through it.

For a long time, this remained a secret I kept entirely to myself. I never told anyone, maybe because part of me was afraid he would somehow find out.

If I had the chance now, I think I would want to be his friend.

I just do not know whether I would deserve that.