Bitterness & Forgiveness

How can I deal with bitterness and residues of bitterness...

Frankly speaking, after all these years I still do not understand how to 'deal' with bitterness besides the obvious answer (through God, that is). I only know that my handling of bitterness is at best 'throwing the trash into the rubbish bin'.

I took a long time to figure out WHY am I holding on to the bitterness I have for those whom I 'hated' or held grudge against. Everytime I am bitter towards somebody, I seem to have different answers but they came from the same root issue - genuine love for them.

If you have no genuine love/feelings for this person, how can you hate them? You do not hate for no reason unless you have nothing to do...

I have had bitterness towards many people in my life: my grandma, my mum, some other friends and even Kin Wee at one point but they are just varying degrees of bitterness and some are very minor compared to the two I mentioned in the previous thread. However non can compare to the bitterness I have for myself.

Many times I keep asking myself, "What the **** am I doing here on this planet?"

I do not score good grades, I cannot play sports very well too, I even felt my playing of video games are only of average standard. Better still, I was never good in time management. I put an unreasonable and unrealistic standard on myself and I always compare with others.

'Why can he score 281 for PSLE!?', 'How did he grow to 1.85m tall?', 'Why can she get $200 for monthly allowance?', 'How come his muscles get bigger and bigger!?', 'Why is he that lucky with girls?', 'How insignificant am I in this population of 6 billion!!!', etc, etc...

I can list all the ikan bilis of comparisons & crap but they are just a result of many factors in me: low self-esteem, small heartedness, inexperienced, pride, expectations, etc, etc...

This is the major reason why I spent 2 barren years wondering what is going on. That is until God found me. He forgave me through Jesus Christ and no matter what, I am glad he did. Now I am learning to forgive myself.