Forgiveness is a funny word. Now readers, please bear with me; I am about to embark upon a rant that I have been building for years, a rant I thought I no longer needed to articulate until now. You see, someone from my past, who I have mentioned before, recently popped up in my community's paper. Now, I did realize that at some point it would happen. I moved here knowing full well that he lived in the same town, but I thought my reaction in seeing him would be different. I thought I would handle it with grace, with a small smile, with a calm and collected manner. Guess again.
There he is smack dab in the middle of the community section surrounded by a bunch of girls. He is starring as the Prince in the play Cinderella. Isn't that sweet? I know it's petty and stupid of me, but sometimes I wish that the people who cause us the most hurt would just fall in a hole and have only bad things happen to them. Karma needs to be a bitch once in a while, agreed? Okay, now that I have gotten that out of the way, I should probably start preaching forgiveness and love, but the thing is I can't do it. I can not. I tried not to let it bother me, I really did; however, I remained in a sour mood last night and today, despite a scathing entry I wrote in my journal this morning. Then I came home after a busy day to his face in yet another weekly paper that we receive.
So I'm sitting here wallowing with my glass of wine and can of mixed nuts. Yes, instead of counting my blessings, I'm guzzling fatty foods and feeling sorry for myself. I just don't understand how good things can continue to happen to bad people. I mean he took a lot of my best qualities away from me- my goodness, my naivety, my innocence, and I will always attribute that to him. So I thought I could be mightier-than-thou and forgive him, but it's harder than snapping my fingers and erasing four years of hurt. So how do you do it? How do you forgive? I'm asking, I'm truly at a loss. I can't help in this matter.
Now, maybe I shouldn't be blogging in this despairing condition, but I think it's important to be real, to be raw, to be vulnerable. I'm sharing this story with the vast Internet, with strangers, with friends, with family, with people who probably know exactly of whom I am speaking. But this experience is about being honest. For me, blogging is about speaking my mind and not being afraid to take criticism from my readers. Writing is about sharing your heart, tapping into emotion, and not pulling back due to fear from those who might make judgments.
You see, the thing is we really can't understand each other's experiences and heartaches because we haven't lived them. We live with the burdens that life has allotted to each of us, and they are all unique and difficult in their own way. While we may empathize or even sympathize, we each experience our own levels of pain, some we can bear, and some we can not. But we write and talk about them in order to come to peace with them, in order to find a network who listens, in order to gain that cliche shoulder to cry on.
Isn't that what life is all about? Honesty? So I'm being honest with you, dear reader. I was hurt in the past, I buried that hurt and now it's rearing its ugly head. I will deal with it in my own way and get over it until it comes back to haunt me again. Until I completely come to terms with it, I will write and I urge you to do whatever it is that helps you purge yourself of emotion as well, whether it is to paint, kick box, write, draw, work-out. Do the thing that helps you feel more like yourself. After a while the bad thoughts won't plague you, and you can be free, at least for a little while. If you're not free, then you always have someone to turn to... me. I can't say I understand or know what you're going through, but I can listen.
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