Healing and Forgiveness

I was so lost.

Mired in a sea of pain, tarry and black,

Unable to get a glimpse of light,

Cold and naked and alone,

In excruciating, agonizing pain,

But I was alive.

For the first time in my life, I wanted to live.

I wanted to live, but felt like I was dying.

I was so afraid.

Then Covid came along,

And mortality loomed,

And I became concerned,

'What if I die before I have the chance to tell my story?'

'What if they spend the rest of their lives not knowing?'

And I opened up and started to tell my truth.

A lot of the truth was not what anyone wanted to hear,

Tales of abuse,

The crying of a wounded child.

And the time came for me to testify.

I gave my testimony over and over again,

Verifying stories and reports made decades ago,

And it colored my world with horror,

The worst of humanity is all I could see.

I reached out,

Grasping for reason,

In an upside down world,

All the while vomiting the infection of my soul,

Standing in a pool of my own darkness,

Seeing nothing but shadows,

Begging the world for a light.

But I didn't know how to ask,

They all turned away.

Some of my crazy splashed on them,

As it poured itself out of my mouth,

And where it touched them, it hurt them,

The people I love the most.

I screamed to them for help,

I retched and spewed until there was no will to live left inside of me.

All I wanted was to know,

Was why I should be allowed to live,

When there was so much blackness in my soul.

I shined a light,

A beacon, calling others to my aid,

But the light was too bright,

It burned their eyes,

And they looked away.

I couldn't see my own brilliance, though,

My vision was obscured,

By the tarry liquid I was suspended in.

I couldn't breathe,

I was drowning.

I wanted the pain to end.

But I didn't know how to let it go,

I had been carrying it for so long.

I had long been crushed,

By the weight of the guilt,

Of those who had hurt me.

So many of them had told me,

'You made me do this',

Or, 'This is for your own good.'

While they tortured my mind,

Raped my body,

Shredded my soul.

I didn't understand,

That I didn't have to drown.

My feet could easily reach the bottom of the pool,

I could simply stand up,

Wipe my eyes,

And step out of the well of despair,

That I had long been stranded in.

I needed to do something, a grand gesture,

One that matched the agony of my spirit.

I went for a walk one night,

On what I believed to be a righteous mission.

Thirty miles later,

I was barefoot, naked, and bleeding,

Shivering in nothing but an undershirt and bathrobe,

Screaming at the police,

That they needed to let me go,

Lives were at stake.

And they were, or at least my own was.

My body may have survived,

But my soul would have died,

If I never made my long walk.

My feet were badly injured,

Thickness burns, they call it,

Basically road rash, but without the scabs,

Raw and bloody and painful.

And I was alone.

I fought to live,

But I wanted my pain to end so badly.

I had to come to grips with the injuries to my feet,

Before I could address the damage,

That had been done to my soul.

When I said that I did this for you, because of you,

I didn’t mean to lay the blame on you,

Only to explain that I was trying to protect you,

I only wanted to keep you safe,

From suffering the agony,

That had nearly killed my soul.

The blame was never yours.

The words I was using were inept,

I needed you to know,

That I never abandoned you,

You were taken from me.

In those times in your life when you needed me,

I was never far away by my own choice.

And, I was determined to prove how much I love you,

Even if it meant walking across the country,

Barefoot and naked, on the side of the freeway.

Know that for the first time in my life,

I was not suicidal,

I wanted to live my life,

To do something monumental,

To show you that nothing is more important,

In my life than you are,

Not even my own life.

In recovering from my injuries,

I have learned something new.

I learned that the thing I had lacked.

The thing that I had been seeking for years,

But never managing to find,

Was what some call 'forgiveness'.

I could not grant absolution,

For I could never remove the culpability of those who had hurt me so,

But I found a simple 'putting it down-ness'.

I learned to stop shouldering the burden,

Placed on me by those who told me,

'You make me do this',

And there were so many of those.

You need to know now,

That I never blamed you for what I did to keep you safe.

It was my choice to stay,

My choice to endure,

It was the only way I could be with you,

The only way I could protect you,

And I do not regret the decision in the slightest.

I am so sorry,

I never meant for my pain to hurt you so,

I was a bundle of broken shards,

Cutting into the souls of those,

Who only wanted to hold me while I cried.

I couldn’t accept the comfort, though,

I couldn't allow myself to not feel it,

I couldn't cry healing tears,

I couldn't absolve those who had caused,

The pain of the torture that was my life,

I was afraid that the pain was the only thing that was real,

Because when I had put it down before,

When I had trusted others and allowed myself to be happy,

I was rewarded with new abuses.

But this time, I focused on myself,

On understanding my own history,

On realizing how much I carried that others had put on me unfairly.

I learned from this experience,

That putting it down is not the same thing,

As granting a plenary indulgence.

It's all in the words.

I couldn't grant them forgiveness,

That lies between them and GOD,

But I did learn to put down the burden,

I let go of the weight that was piled on my back.

It was never mine to carry,

And I realized that it would continue to damage me,

If I had continued to hold onto it.

In my entire life,

Every moment has been colored by pain,

Pain is the measuring stick,

That I used to know how I felt.

Happy to sad was a sliding scale,

Based on how little or how much I was hurting,

And I felt disconnected from the world around me,

Anytime the pain was gone.

I am beginning a new chapter in my life,

One where I learn to be something else,

Where I experience something other than pain.

I am learning now, how to live,

Rather than spending all of my energy,

Fighting to be alive,

While I carried the hot coals of the cruelty of others,

Burning myself up inside.

For most of my life, I wanted to die,

Having been told that the world would be a better place without me.

I know better now.

My heart had to break,

My shell had to shatter,

So that I could shoot up out of the darkness,

Finally, learning what I've always sought.

An acorn, long planted in blackness,

Impacted deep in the earth,

I have sprouted leaves,

I am ready, finally,

To grow deep roots,

And reach for the sky.

Birth is painful, children.

Not only for the mother, but for the offspring.

Do you think that hatching from a shell,

Or bursting from a cocoon,

Could be any more or less agonizing,

Than being squeezed and pushed through a tube,

That is a fraction of the size of your body?

Rebirth is also painful.

Who you are changes and is cast aside,

As the new, glorious being you have become,

Bursts forward into the world.

That is what forgiving is,

Freedom to be yourself,

Free of the burden of another's guilt,

Understanding that you are who you are meant to be,

And allowing yourself to be free.