Really, my mind questions looking up into the brilliant robin’s egg blue sky filled with sunshine? A day like today and your thoughts are on something you did 30 years ago that was supposed to be already forgiven?
Walking around the meadow on a rare sun-filled day, my boots crunching on the icy snow left from the 7-degree frosty night, my mind clambered about more than a mistake made. A mistake is hard enough for my harsh mind to forgive but doing something to another living being that is harmful, knowing it would be harmful and doing it anyway… that feels despicable and still grieves me.
Mid-morning is a better time for these things to erupt and work on, better than nighttime, so progress. Might as well be myself all the time, not wait for the dark to close in. And the me made in childhood concentrates direly on mistakes, failures, and flaws. That is what childhood sexual abuse does to a new forming personality.
And my personality is just that, harsh on myself, and unforgiving. A cold pit frothing for warmth.
So, speak easy, or at least try, then try some more.
Pulling our Adirondack chairs towards the sun we sat. Many times my mouth almost opened to confess yet looking at Samuel reposed in the sunshine I kept silent, also progress. Working on these pitfalls internally are necessary because no one but me can forgive me. Yet sometimes help is needed.
Restless, finally I asked, “Samuel, do you ever think about something you did wrong even if 30 years ago? More than a mistake, but something you know is wrong but did it anyway?”
He is slow to respond, but said, “That is a mistake. Let it go.”
Yes, that is how most people are, not constantly bashing themselves on the head. Can’t you think of some positives, haranguing myself even more for having this difficult part of me. That one thing is my worst wrong-doing of my life, and it is a good place to start with forgiving myself. Look at the person I was then and how mixed up I was. Those personality traits of self repulsion remain. As an empath, or highly sensitive soul, that wrong extremely opposed who I am, and who I nurture to be.
Samuel said, “When you get older, you get wiser,” as I trailed behind him on the path up to the house, desperate to have the same self-acceptance he does.
I stayed silent wondering how on this gorgeous day my mind could be spinning with so much self-hate. The depth of self-loathing that occurred in childhood is something that will always require attention. Like Loch Ness it rears its head even more in wintertime.