Yes I know it is a heavy word with lots of religious undertones. But it is what is on my mind today. Forgiveness just didn’t get me there. It felt too passive. As if forgiveness was too easy or a default state one enters. It isn’t, I know that. But regardless it feels like for this most current wound, something more than forgiveness would be required.
Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which one who may have felt initially wronged, victimized, harmed or hurt goes through a process in changing feelings and attitude regarding a given offender for his/her actions, and overcomes the impact of the offense, flaw or mistake including negative emotions such as resentment or a desire for vengeance.
Forgiveness involves a personal and "voluntary" effort at the self-transformation of one's own half of a relationship with another, such that one is restored to peace and ideally to what psychologist Carl Rogers has referred to as "unconditional positive regard" towards the other. Forgiveness can seal off a past wrongdoing and remove it from the present. Dictionary.com
And to be clear, forgiveness, at least for me isn’t a one and done. It is a process. And a week seems like an awfully short period of time to process betrayal and deceit. However, I will also tell you that the last week has been an avalanche of information that I always suspected but could never prove. Now having the proof has kind of sped up the whole process for me.
It has been kind of like grieving someone with a long, withering illness. By the time they are actually gone, you realize you have been grieving the loss of them for a long time. And that is how I feel today. I have been grieving the loss of this relationship almost from its inception. I was wrong to get involved in the first place and while the love I felt, or thought I felt, was real, it was mired in dysfunction and a lack of real intimacy. I see that now. I didn’t then.
And to own that which is mine, I was all caught up in the feel good feelings that began this whole debacle. And I being a good addict wanted more, even though there was a great amount of evidence to the contrary from the very beginning. Did I ignore it? Sort of, I think I more filed it away for later use. And then refused to use it when the time came where its use was needed.
I still have a lot of unpacking to do about my involvement in this whole ordeal, and I will do that but I feel like where I am now is that I need to not only forgive but grant absolution. To let all my hard feelings, pain, suffering and loss go. They are not serving me and only making me a smaller, harder version of myself. If we could have done this better we would have. And we couldn’t. And despite a great amount of love, there was no trust for either of us. I am not sure how I ended up in a two year thing with someone I didn’t trust who didn’t trust me, but I did. And that is some hard truth right there.
I can see now I didn’t lay a foundation. I didn’t give it time. I didn’t own that which was mine with someone who was similarly capable. In short, I jumped over and around a lot of relationships building blocks and instead went for what felt good at the time. And kind of like drinking, what works in the immediacy of life, isn’t all that great when you stretch that decision out over time.
I can see now that I lacked and failed to insist upon a great many things that would be required for an actual loving relationship to be maintained. I was still in my quick fix stage of immaturity and I remained there throughout this whole deal. And so I am not blameless or a victim. I jumped in quite willingly and so now I do not get to call him out for all the shit that I overlooked from the start.
And this is why it feels like I must grant us both absolution: formal release from guilt, obligation or punishment. We owe each other nothing further. We did our best and though it was severely and malignantly lacking, it was still our best effort. And I think we have both been punished enough in this life. And I want to be the jailer of no one...ever. And this would also include myself.
So I am granting the absolution, an amnesty of sorts for both of us. We tried, and failed repeatedly. And while the stunning, painful ending came from a gross revelation of his secret conduct, I saw the ending in the beginning, always. I just didn’t want that to be the case. And looking back now, I am not even sure why. I was unhappy in this union more than I was happy. Ask anyone in my inner circle, they will tell you that I was haunted, possessed even sometimes. It was not a good feeling for most of it. Trying to wring love out of something that only very sporadically felt loving. I saw the signs from the word go, and for reasons of my own, that are perhaps a little too dark and personal to share at this level, I persisted despite all the warnings, red flags and lack of any real kind of satisfaction.
So on this very early morning (I was awakened again at 3 am with thoughts swirling in my head - waking me up and forcing me out of bed to start my day long before I was really ready) where I find myself ready to let go of the pain, the anger, the hurt and the confusion. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want to hate him, or even be aggrieved at him anymore. I want to relegate him to some neutral place where I can see and feel that this was just not meant to be, ever. This was not some amazing love story...it was a lost cause from the start.
And in some weird way, that brings me peace today. I learn so much more from my failures than I do my successes. And this one feels no different. This relational mix of fantasy, recovery, addiction and trauma really had no where else to go, despite I think our both true desires to create something greater than our capacities could actually manage.
I have learned a lot. Mostly about myself. My traumas and how they plague me still. My own issues with self worth, esteem and value. I guess what I see most of all is that this whole relational crisis peeled back the scabs of wounds long existing and festering. And while the process of reopening that which I thought was in a process of healing, I can see and feel now that it had to be this way. There was no other course that could be followed for either of us.
So today I release us both from the condemnation of love gone wrong. I did love him to the very best of my ability. And while it still feels like a stretch to grant him this, I think he did his best too. And in that tensile reach, what didn’t work out feels less personal and hurtful and more like individual journeys whose paths crossed and intermingled in ways that perhaps were not really necessary or helpful. But here we are.
So today at 4 am, I forgive him and I forgive me. I change my relationship to this whole relationship and decide to grant us both absolution from any further guilt, obligation or punishment. He owes me nothing. I owe him nothing. He is free. I am free. Neither of us required to be hurt or hurting any longer. I have always wanted what was best for him, in fact, I think I wanted that more than what I wanted for myself. And I can see, now, that was and is part of my problem in all of my intimate relationships. I enter thinking that if I just love them enough that one day they are going to turn around and give me what I give them. And in a very brutal and painful evolving understanding that was born of this union of he and I, I can see just how misguided that pattern of behavior is and was for me.
I picked him over me a lot. And then resented him for my choice. Held him accountable for my codependency and inability to set and hold appropriate adult boundaries for myself. And today, with a great deal of trepidation, I commit to not doing that anymore. Even though I am not sure how, I know that whatever journey starts right here, it is a journey of selecting myself, my needs and my intuitions over that of others...not just in romantic relationships, but in all of my relationships. Not in a selfish, serve me kind of way. But more in a “this is my life, and I have to live it, and you can like it or leave it, that really isn’t any longer being classified as my business.”
Release, forgiveness and absolution have probably a lot in common, but the connecting fiber for me today is that each requires a wiping of the historical slate, a removal of the relational score card. And with a tabla rasa, a new beginning is born adjacent to all that was before. So that the lessons of the past continue to exist but they are given a new soil in which to grow, one that is fertilized by the decaying remains of the past always, but providing a new place for the life cycle to start again. I feel that deeply today.
And absolution is the great leveler. Wiping all the things no longer needed to sustain life to be trashed and put away. Altering the focus, the intention and the actions that are sure to follow. Forgiveness often feels like a letting go, but with an intentional absolution act to accompany the release, it feels like the creation of a place of equanimity, a place where all that failed exists right along side all that didn’t. And with the old and new finding some sort of harmony and coexistence with the other, I can feel the wound close and finally, blessedly begin to really heal.
You thought I would say again, still. But I am sure I have never been to this particular place before...ever. And that feels like something to celebrate today. As I move forward in this body, mind and soul capable of holding all the very complex, hard feelings and thoughts related to living an awakened life.
And so it appears I rise, a cosmic leveling up in spirit, in intention, in capacity, in deed. Still I rise...again, still.
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