I feel like there will always be a disclaimer at the beginning of my posts. This time, let me tell you that I have no idea where this blog post is going. If you are sensitive to it, here is a preemptive abuse trigger warning.
You probably saw the title of this post and thought it was going to be incredibly churchy and preachy. It isn't. I'm not taking about religious forgiveness. I am talking about personal forgiveness, as in forgiving those people in your life who have hurt you. Maybe to you this is a type of religious forgiveness, but to some of you it may not be. Anywho here goes.
I had a really strange experience lately. One involving many coincidences and no real facts. I won't get into it, because I think someone involved in this strange experience is either watching my posts here or passing information to someone else. Either way, I won't allow myself to be victimized again. Did you read that? I will NOT allow myself to be victimized again. I spent way too much of the last several years allowing myself to live in fear. And regardless of where my abuser is in his life, regardless of where I am in my life, I will forever live with the feelings of inadequacy I once had thrust upon me. But I do NOT need to live my life continuing to feed myself those lines that I was fed. I had a very sweet person recently inform me -for lack of better word- that I needed to be telling myself words that matter. I didn't really understand at first. "I do tell myself words that matter," I thought. But I don't. Especially when I am stressed. When I am stressed out, or feeling particularly run down, I find myself repeating my old mantras from when I was being abused. "You're worthless. You're nothing. No one loves you. No one will ever love you." And sometimes I find myself missing my abuser. Isn't that crazy? But it's true. In those times of distress, I miss him. Because he made me feel grounded. In a world that I thought didn't want me, he did, I thought. But he didn't. I know that now.
Onto forgiveness. I don't know if I can ever forgive him for the things he did to me. I want to. Some days. Mostly I just want him to feel as miserable as he made me feel, though, so I don't know. Maybe that makes me a bad person. I think it just makes me feel human.
But this odd experience that I had, it got me thinking about someone else in my life who hurt me. This person has been part of my life since I can remember. We have been in and out of one another's lives more times than I can count. We have been spiraling in and out of control, orbiting one another's madness longer than anyone knows. But through it all, I have shown him forgiveness. He has hurt me in ways that are unimaginable, but I have forgiven him for all of it.
It makes me wonder if one can use up their forgiveness. Have I wasted all of my forgiveness on someone who I now only speak to once every six months? Or are our hearts truly able to generate forgiveness for anyone?
If our hearts are full of this unlimited forgiveness, why can't I forgive my abuser? Is our forgiveness limited only to those who hurt us in certain ways, but not in others? How do we grade the hurt that one has caused us to be greater than the abuse that is caused by another?
There is another individual in my life who I cannot forgive. I have only spoken to this person twice in my life, and yet he has ruined me in ways that I cannot explain to you, because I don't want to. I keep the pain he caused me close to my heart and I refuse to share it. It is mine, and I do not ever want to share that pain with anyone other than those who are very very close to me and know everything there is to know. However, this incredible pain that he has caused me shouldn't be reason enough for me to not forgive him. I don't know if I am choosing not to forgive, or if I really can't. If I dwell on it too long, it causes me an incredible amount of sadness.
Why do we hold on to these things? Why do I keep this man so close to me, a man who barely knows me, who probably forgets I exist on a day to day basis? Why do I let his words, his actions, mean so much?
And how do we forgive ourselves? How do we keep the thoughts of inadequacy from creeping in during our most vulnerable moments? How do we forgive those moments of weakness when we entertain old temptations? How do we let go of those thoughts of doubt and low self worth? How do we keep them from recurring?
I have no answers. And I don't expect answers. I just needed a place to put all of my questions, and this seemed as good a place as any.
*side note, this is not to say that no woman has ever hurt me. I have been hurt my females in my life too, but I have a particularly long background in male-dominated pain in my life, and that's what I choose to write about. If you don't appreciate that or don't want to hear about it, don't read it.
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