Something I have to forgive someone for...this is another tough one. Or may be not as tough as I would have myself believe.
I know I have to forgive my dad for what he did - for the affairs, the lying, the stealing, the manipulation, the destroying of toys, pictures, the family home both metaphorically and literally, for his selfishness and the seeds of mistrust that he sowed all those years ago. Yet I can't and I doubt I ever will.
There is nothing he can say, no words of contrition that would - or could - ever justify what he did to us, to my mum, to my sisters and to me. He has nothing to say that I want to hear or am prepared to hear.
I know it takes as much passion to hate as it does to love and that he isn't deserving of such passion, yet I am unable to let go of it. Unable to forgive and forget and move on. I have to admit there is a part of me that wonders what and who I would be if I did let go of those feelings, resolved my 'issues' and just...stopped allowing it to shape me. When you've held on to something so tightly regardless of it's toxic nature to the point of not being able to see where you end and it begins, it is hard to cauterise that part of yourself and leave it empty. What would it be replaced by and how long would it take for it to be filled again? Would the replacement be any better or healthier?
It sounds petty but I withhold myself from him and won't allow him into my life, at least not in any significant way, as a means of punishing him. He wasn't there to pick me up after meeting with friends, he wasn't there to see me grow up from an awkward teenager in to a head strong woman, he wasn't there on my wedding day to see me walk or to walk me down the aisle and he won't be there to see me off when I move to another country. I might not have cauterised my feelings for him but I have cauterised him out of my life. Of course you could argue due to my bitterness he has a larger part and role in my life than if I just forgave him and forgot all about him...but lets not split hairs.
Showing posts with label Forgiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forgiveness. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Friday, 23 July 2010
The Sins of the Mother
I've been thinking about my immediate past - about the falling out I had with my mum and the way I reacted (am still reacting) in particular. I've been analysing my feelings, my behaviour, my thoughts and my perception of them and for once not trying to make sense of them or to arrange them in to some kind of order. I've not even been attempting to suppress them or deny them, yet nor have I given them free rein either (I am not that brave yet). This time I've deliberately placed myself in a no man's land to give myself the better view of a 360 degree perspective all of it.
The one thing which I keep coming back to and is becoming glaringly apparent - it would seem - is throughout it all I only ever thought about myself. All I could think about and still do is how it made ME feel, how I was going to recover from it, how I was going to be able to find a way back or a way to move forward from it, how I was going to be able to forgive and how I was going to heal. It was all about ME. While the thought did occur to me that perhaps I might have had it coming considering the decisions I made, I still largely couldn't see beyond my assumption that I was the aggrieved party.
Despite being 30 years of age during that time I was very much a child in need of her mother. I needed her support, her guidance, her sympathy and understanding and to know that she was there for me. I felt totally abandoned, misunderstood and distraught. Perhaps some would say 'Natasha you were 30 years of age and should have let go of the apron strings a long time ago to stand on your own two feet. Stop being a baby and take responsibility for your actions.' To a certain degree I make them right - I do need to stand up and take responsibility for my actions, take ownership of my leading role in the mess and stop feeling sorry for myself. Yet somehow, and perhaps it is still the hurt child within that makes me feel this, I can't let go of the fact that yes I was a child and yes I needed my mother and the fact is she let me down. I needed her and she wasn't there for me, I was hurting and she wasn't there to heal, I was crying and she wasn't there to comfort.
Previous comments and chastisement notwithstanding, I also present the question 'Do you ever stop being a child'? Need, vulnerability, uncertainty, and conflict aside is there a point in your life when you stop being a child in the eyes of your parents? Arguably not and so with that in mind I have to say at the moment when I was feeling the loss of my mum's support, sympathy, guidance, understanding and presence she was in much the same position.
Mum's relationship with her own mother had been strained for many years, it had long passed the exchanging of harsh words with passion to not even visiting once a year. In the end they had moved beyond heated words and embittered rants to the resigned silence of 'It is what it is'. So as my mum's mother, Charlotte Frances Debono, lay dying in a hospital bed my mum held on to her grief, buried her feelings of being an abandoned child herself and instead allowed herself to believe that she was making her peace.
Its only now two years and some months later that she has admitted to me, but more importantly to herself, that she has just begun to grieve for the loss of her mother as a child. Finally she is able to see that when they said their goodbyes to each other she hadn't really forgiven her; not for the root of their estrangement, not for leaving her without having resolved their differences but mostly for leaving her - the child - motherless.
What can you do and say when faced with that reality?
It's true, I'm ashamed to say, that I've not forgiven my mum for not being there for me when I needed her. It still hurts too much and makes me angry. I'm hopeful and mindful though that history should not repeat itself and I don't want to find myself in the same situation as my mum. I don't want to awake to the epiphany there is still so much left unsaid, unresolved and unforgiven between us. I can only hope I keep this in the forefront of thoughts while I work my way toward wherever it is I'm headed.
The one thing which I keep coming back to and is becoming glaringly apparent - it would seem - is throughout it all I only ever thought about myself. All I could think about and still do is how it made ME feel, how I was going to recover from it, how I was going to be able to find a way back or a way to move forward from it, how I was going to be able to forgive and how I was going to heal. It was all about ME. While the thought did occur to me that perhaps I might have had it coming considering the decisions I made, I still largely couldn't see beyond my assumption that I was the aggrieved party.
Despite being 30 years of age during that time I was very much a child in need of her mother. I needed her support, her guidance, her sympathy and understanding and to know that she was there for me. I felt totally abandoned, misunderstood and distraught. Perhaps some would say 'Natasha you were 30 years of age and should have let go of the apron strings a long time ago to stand on your own two feet. Stop being a baby and take responsibility for your actions.' To a certain degree I make them right - I do need to stand up and take responsibility for my actions, take ownership of my leading role in the mess and stop feeling sorry for myself. Yet somehow, and perhaps it is still the hurt child within that makes me feel this, I can't let go of the fact that yes I was a child and yes I needed my mother and the fact is she let me down. I needed her and she wasn't there for me, I was hurting and she wasn't there to heal, I was crying and she wasn't there to comfort.
Previous comments and chastisement notwithstanding, I also present the question 'Do you ever stop being a child'? Need, vulnerability, uncertainty, and conflict aside is there a point in your life when you stop being a child in the eyes of your parents? Arguably not and so with that in mind I have to say at the moment when I was feeling the loss of my mum's support, sympathy, guidance, understanding and presence she was in much the same position.
Mum's relationship with her own mother had been strained for many years, it had long passed the exchanging of harsh words with passion to not even visiting once a year. In the end they had moved beyond heated words and embittered rants to the resigned silence of 'It is what it is'. So as my mum's mother, Charlotte Frances Debono, lay dying in a hospital bed my mum held on to her grief, buried her feelings of being an abandoned child herself and instead allowed herself to believe that she was making her peace.
Its only now two years and some months later that she has admitted to me, but more importantly to herself, that she has just begun to grieve for the loss of her mother as a child. Finally she is able to see that when they said their goodbyes to each other she hadn't really forgiven her; not for the root of their estrangement, not for leaving her without having resolved their differences but mostly for leaving her - the child - motherless.
What can you do and say when faced with that reality?
It's true, I'm ashamed to say, that I've not forgiven my mum for not being there for me when I needed her. It still hurts too much and makes me angry. I'm hopeful and mindful though that history should not repeat itself and I don't want to find myself in the same situation as my mum. I don't want to awake to the epiphany there is still so much left unsaid, unresolved and unforgiven between us. I can only hope I keep this in the forefront of thoughts while I work my way toward wherever it is I'm headed.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Forgiveness and Love
Forgiveness and love are complicated things. I would say they are intricately linked in ways I can’t even begin to fathom and find infinitely painful to examine at present. But like a true sadist I find that I can’t distract myself from its topic. I can’t leave this one alone; indeed I haven’t been able to leave this one alone to heal for a long time. Just when it seems that wounds are healing over, renewing themselves and becoming something other than gaping and all encompassing, I start ‘picking’ at it, re-examining it and fussing over it. I want to know why it happened, how it happened. Essentially it comes down to a need to know what I did wrong in order to end up with it in the first place.
Why is it that I find it easier to forgive family members who have hurt me than I do others? Perhaps it has everything to do with my mum’s words “You don’t hurt you sister, you love her” that I seem to unstintingly apply that mantra to most – but not all - things in my life.
Perhaps I forgive family that much quicker (although I can’t say it is ever easier) because I have to love them. You can do nothing but love them. There is, with family, a tie which can’t (not ever really) be severed. They are, at least in theory and are meant to be, the one constant thing in your life. No matter what you do they are meant to love you and to forgive you and vice versa. The reality is that it is never that easy.
The question I find myself wrestling with, and for some time now, is how you let go of hurt and love someone again? How do you get back to that place of trust and love that you were in before with them? What do you do if for so long it has been doubted that you can or will? How do you get back to looking at them with the kind of love that you did before?
The process of self-analysis is often misleading. I’ve found through personal experience that looking closely at things more often than not presents a distorted picture, distorted because my emotions at the time are undeniably so intimately connected and bound up in things that I’m not able to see clearly, I’m not able to be reasonable. I panic. My fears take over and I’m lost. Doubt insidiously works its way in to the chinks of my self-analysis and becomes all pervading. So, I ask, doubt aside, how do you recover from the kind of hurt that has wreaked a kind of devastation that has marked all other aspects of your life? How do you deal with the kind of hurt that has tainted and tarnished what feels like everything with such sadness you feel you might not ever smile (the kind that reaches and touches you inside) again? How do you heal from such a hurt? How do you stop the ashes of its rupture from influencing everything else? How do you look to the future knowing it is going to happen again and accept it willingly in the name of love? Is such a thing possible?
I look down the road of my future and I know, without really knowing how, that its going to happen again. It’s happened before, I’ve been here before. And while it is a comfort to know that I got over it, its a small comfort. Last time it didn’t take this long to work out, nor did it hurt this much and I can’t say that I knew then that it would something I would face again. I do take a measure of comfort in knowing I’ve begun the healing process but it all still hurts monstrously. Some days it is still so unbearable. It is crippling and debilitating in ways that I can’t describe, in a way that renders me speechless beyond tears.
No one ever anticipates just how devastating it can be to need someone, to really need them in ways that you’ve never experienced before, and to be let down. Reaching out to someone when you are at your most vulnerable, when you are crippled by the need for support and understanding, to find yourself totally alone is crushing. It isn’t just about trust, it isn’t just about disappointment, or hurt, or confusion, or fear, or even anger if you can muster your wits enough to experience that one. It’s all of those things, but its being assailed and assaulted by ALL of them at one and the same time. There’s no drawing your breath, there’s no gathering yourself together, there’s no picking yourself up off the floor. There’s nothing, just an aching and raw need to slip over the edge into oblivion. There is only the desire to freefall into its embrace.
I fell and there was no one there to catch me. The people I needed to be there for me wasn’t. I don’t need people very often – experience has taught me it is best not to – but every once in a while my guard comes down and I do. I allow myself to. It hurt. Really hurt. There wasn’t any anger about being let down, not then and not even now really. Just the hurt, isolated and alone like me. The hurt didn’t come from finding out that the person wasn’t the person that I thought they were - I didn’t have my wits about me enough to think that profoundl. It was more basic, more primal than that. It was about feeling vulnerable, feeling like a child and feeling abandoned.
I know the intent to hurt me was never there. It wasn’t something they consciously decided to do, but that doesn’t lessen the pain or the hurt. It doesn’t stop me pushing them away because right now I can’t love them the way I should no matter how much I want to. I want to be able to feel about them they way that I used to. I want to be able to look at them and to see their flaws without feeling the hurt and sadness that comes along with them. I want for them to be what they always were for me; everything.
How do you get back or move on so you can find that place again?
Why is it that I find it easier to forgive family members who have hurt me than I do others? Perhaps it has everything to do with my mum’s words “You don’t hurt you sister, you love her” that I seem to unstintingly apply that mantra to most – but not all - things in my life.
Perhaps I forgive family that much quicker (although I can’t say it is ever easier) because I have to love them. You can do nothing but love them. There is, with family, a tie which can’t (not ever really) be severed. They are, at least in theory and are meant to be, the one constant thing in your life. No matter what you do they are meant to love you and to forgive you and vice versa. The reality is that it is never that easy.
The question I find myself wrestling with, and for some time now, is how you let go of hurt and love someone again? How do you get back to that place of trust and love that you were in before with them? What do you do if for so long it has been doubted that you can or will? How do you get back to looking at them with the kind of love that you did before?
The process of self-analysis is often misleading. I’ve found through personal experience that looking closely at things more often than not presents a distorted picture, distorted because my emotions at the time are undeniably so intimately connected and bound up in things that I’m not able to see clearly, I’m not able to be reasonable. I panic. My fears take over and I’m lost. Doubt insidiously works its way in to the chinks of my self-analysis and becomes all pervading. So, I ask, doubt aside, how do you recover from the kind of hurt that has wreaked a kind of devastation that has marked all other aspects of your life? How do you deal with the kind of hurt that has tainted and tarnished what feels like everything with such sadness you feel you might not ever smile (the kind that reaches and touches you inside) again? How do you heal from such a hurt? How do you stop the ashes of its rupture from influencing everything else? How do you look to the future knowing it is going to happen again and accept it willingly in the name of love? Is such a thing possible?
I look down the road of my future and I know, without really knowing how, that its going to happen again. It’s happened before, I’ve been here before. And while it is a comfort to know that I got over it, its a small comfort. Last time it didn’t take this long to work out, nor did it hurt this much and I can’t say that I knew then that it would something I would face again. I do take a measure of comfort in knowing I’ve begun the healing process but it all still hurts monstrously. Some days it is still so unbearable. It is crippling and debilitating in ways that I can’t describe, in a way that renders me speechless beyond tears.
No one ever anticipates just how devastating it can be to need someone, to really need them in ways that you’ve never experienced before, and to be let down. Reaching out to someone when you are at your most vulnerable, when you are crippled by the need for support and understanding, to find yourself totally alone is crushing. It isn’t just about trust, it isn’t just about disappointment, or hurt, or confusion, or fear, or even anger if you can muster your wits enough to experience that one. It’s all of those things, but its being assailed and assaulted by ALL of them at one and the same time. There’s no drawing your breath, there’s no gathering yourself together, there’s no picking yourself up off the floor. There’s nothing, just an aching and raw need to slip over the edge into oblivion. There is only the desire to freefall into its embrace.
I fell and there was no one there to catch me. The people I needed to be there for me wasn’t. I don’t need people very often – experience has taught me it is best not to – but every once in a while my guard comes down and I do. I allow myself to. It hurt. Really hurt. There wasn’t any anger about being let down, not then and not even now really. Just the hurt, isolated and alone like me. The hurt didn’t come from finding out that the person wasn’t the person that I thought they were - I didn’t have my wits about me enough to think that profoundl. It was more basic, more primal than that. It was about feeling vulnerable, feeling like a child and feeling abandoned.
I know the intent to hurt me was never there. It wasn’t something they consciously decided to do, but that doesn’t lessen the pain or the hurt. It doesn’t stop me pushing them away because right now I can’t love them the way I should no matter how much I want to. I want to be able to feel about them they way that I used to. I want to be able to look at them and to see their flaws without feeling the hurt and sadness that comes along with them. I want for them to be what they always were for me; everything.
How do you get back or move on so you can find that place again?
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