Tag: hurt

Forgiveness

The tears won’t stop.

They fall…without my permission…as I try to understand why my mind isn’t letting me process this.

It’s just a damn apology, I tell myself.  Accept it.  Just take it and let it all go.

But something is holding me back.

I call my husband…

I tell him through sobs…and he gets it.

I know, he says…I know exactly what you mean…

We talk a bit…about forgiveness…about apologies…about getting hurt.

And I acknowledge my pattern.

When someone apologizes to me, I freeze.

I don’t know what to say…

Because deep down…even though logic tells me I did nothing wrong to deserve the pain…I am still that little girl who thought it was all her fault…who thought she was to blame for everything that happened to her…

So I look for something to make it mine…to make this wrong something that was coming to me…and I usually find something little…a reaction…a retort…the way I handled the pain…something that makes me say – SEE!  You ARE in the wrong here…you SHOULD be punished!

I need to work on this…to be able to accept an apology given sincerely and forgive wholeheartedly…to put someone at ease and let them know that they are forgiven.

The truth is – I do forgive.  I just have a hard time saying it…because I’ve been holding forgiveness in for so long…since I was that guilt-ridden little girl…since I realized why I had to forgive…and I wish…so badly…that it would be asked of me…so that I can finally let go and say…with all my heart…

I forgive you.

If you see this…please know…I forgive you.

I forgive you.

Broken

The anthem for the broken people is part song, part chant, part silence.

It has no rhythm. No rhyme. No pattern.

It has highs and lows and in-betweens.

Sometimes, it’s one, clear thought.

Most times, it’s a long rambling journey like the one they told you once you would have to take until you would find the end, past the twists and turns and drops hiding around thorn bushes and smooth rocks, under blue skies streaked with the blood red of your childhood and the blackness of your youth, and into the future of either victory or death, although you never know which one you want to be your end, so you keep going around and around on this rambling road until you can’t take it anymore and have to choose something so that you can go somewhere else and leave the anthem of the broken people lying on the ground with the shattered pieces of the shadow you used to be put together by a hope you once dreamed, only to realize that there was a piece missing and there is a hole where you should be.

…

…

When the silence starts to choke the little bits of life left, a haunting hum floats through the air.

The anthem gathers speed and adds the drums to its rising sound as it hits notes only broken people hear.

They gather together, all the broken people, and raise their silent voices as they try to break the world so that it will know how they feel.

Only, the world, already broken, has been singing this song, chanting the words for millions of years.

The anthem has nowhere left to go.

Dying down, it travels back inside the holes of the broken people and widens them so that next time, maybe, there will be more broken people to share the broken tune of a broken anthem with a broken world filled with the holes broken people made.

Shhhh.

Can you hear it?

The Words I Am Made Of

I cannot find the words to express the puddle of feelings I sit in.

I cannot understand how I came to be here, curled up on the floor…a victim…again.

I am searching, digging through my past to find where this fits…but it is so different…so strange…

I pursued peace, as I am taught to do, and was hit in return with a vicious blow in the form of a woman consumed by the ugliest rage I have ever seen.  Anger…hatred…directed at me because I reached out in genuine hope for reconciliation.  And the look in her eyes…distant…vague…making me doubt I was even standing there in front of her.

My heart betrayed me and caused my body to shake with it’s racing beat…and opened my mouth to shoot the only arrow I had…the one I had vowed not to use…because it was mean…

My mind formed the right words later.  Too late.  When there was no one there to hear them

NO.  Stop.  Don’t.  I will not Allow this.  I can Leave.  I have the Power.  You have no Right to hurt me.  I am Strong.  I am Worthy.

But I fell apart before the words stopped running away from me.

When the pieces of me figured out where they belonged, I was on the floor in my husband’s arms.  Afraid.  Vulnerable.  Confused.  Tired.  Very, very tired… 

So I sit…and hope that maybe, someday soon, I can figure out why someone was able to throw me down…pinning me under projected issues and warped reason…

For now, I am comforted by my love of seven years as he holds my hand and tells me it will be ok.

And it will be…because he said so…and because I know that if I say them everyday…I will remember my Words.

Well, It’s About Time I Got Around To This…

We talked about that one place in my heart that I can’t get over.  It comes up occasionally.  We talk it over a bit.  He wants me to try to find a solution.  I usually nod my head and try to forget again.

This time it’s sticking to the walls of my brain, begging me to at least give it some words strung together as a validation for the anxiety it manages to produce.

Life is all about work.  My experiences in the past have taught me enough to get by.  When there’s a hitch, I’ve got some great tools lined up in my handy toolbox for all types of troubles.  Sometimes things need the ax, and that’s when I cut toxic people or things out of my life, and sometimes a screwdriver can tighten up loose ends.  Construction is full of demolitions, repairs, and creation.  (Forgive the coarse analogy.  When you live with a carpenter you’ll understand…)

But I don’t have to tools to deal with this one…

It came back to me when I saw a picture on Facebook, that wonderful site that has horrifying memories lined up, waiting to hit you with a friend request, a friend suggestion or a notification that you’ve been tagged.

We were standing on the stairs of our school in our uniforms.  Arms were thrown over shoulders and faces were arranged in more flattering angles as the group posed for someone.  Click.  And there I stand, right in the middle, with strangers all around.

Everyone was tagged and the comments were the usual banter of teenage nightmares.  Someone else, a friend of someone who knew someone, piped up about the only one not tagged and provided them with my married name.  And I was promptly tagged.

I don’t know how we became that group.  My family background, religious affiliations, and basic thought processes make the friendships seem off and misplaced from where I stand today, but back then I was confident and comfortable with it.  Maybe that was my mistake.  Maybe I should have known that they could never really be my friends…

It’s not a long story, it may not be a story at all, but the memory is of me, trusting in the friendships a teenage girl cultivates for what seems to be centuries, confiding in my close-knit circle, reaching out with pain and an honest desire for help, and watching the arms recede from my shoulders, the faces turning away, as I was left standing on the stairs, alone.

At sixteen, the only safety a girl knows is the circle of friends that she devoted her entire life to.  At sixteen, a girl needs to know that she has someone to lean on.  At sixteen, a girl can feel like dying when she realizes that, at sixteen, her world turned on her, spit her out, and never thought about her again.

So, don’t be my Facebook friend because you were curious to see whatever happened to me.  Don’t pretend I didn’t exist as you blithely tag yourselves around me.  And please, please hear me when I tell you that the way you treated me when we were sixteen has etched its way into my heart and is now clawing on the sides of my brain demanding to be revealed.

You abandoned me.

At sixteen.

And it still hurts.

There.

You can get the ax now.

Hurt

Eyes…fearful eyes…peer over the trench…

…pale neck stretching to greet the blade…

…back arched in eager anticipation…

…knees bent to absorb the shock…

…hands raised in wordless prayer…

…please…please…please…

…silence…

The blade falls…the world is still…

…for a moment…

Rushing forward…screaming…cursing…throat dripping shrieks of anger…hatred…pain…hurt…

…so…much…hurt…