In the late nineteen nineties, I did a research paper on Hanford. It was the location of the part of the Manhattan Project where they refined plutonium for the creation of nuclear bombs used against Japan in WW2 and during the build up of the Cold War arsenal.
Because of the secretive nature of national weaponry production, news of the radioactive leakages into the air, ground and nearby river, while detected from the earliest stages, was kept from the general public for decades, leading to significantly higher cancer rates for those living in the vicinity.
Even today, there remains “177 underground storage tanks on the site, holding about 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste.” The irony of the situation is that the creation of weapons we intended to attack or defend against others has poisoned the very land we are trying to protect. The victims are ourselves rather than our perceived enemies.
That situation came to my mind recently when I learned that a loved one of mine had a list of all the bad things I had done to them. The time I came over too early. The time I had stopped by unannounced. That time I brought a friend over without asking. The time I stayed too late. The most recent time when I left too soon leaving them with extra food. The list was pretty long and included incidents from over ten years ago.
Apparently the list has been living rent-free in their head where it had become a cancer to our relationship. Recently they blew up at me and when I asked why they were so angry, they sent me the list. Some of the items weren’t a total surprise. When they first responded negatively to the social infractions, I immediately changed my behavior. I definitely have not come by early or unannounced for years. In fact, we rarely see each other anymore and perhaps this last get together will be our final time. I hope that my clean up efforts of apologies and gestures of reconciliation and will be successful, but there’s a lot of toxic emotions to wade through.
It’s best practices to not keep long records of wrongs because it hurts the victim over and over again while the clueless friend/enemy doesn’t feel bad until one day when their whole world blows up.
