This quote inspired me for my blog today. As I have mentioned in past blogs, when you are angry at someone, hating them for what harm they have done to you, thinking forever about ways to revenge yourself, thinking about how horrible they are....you are stuck in victim mode, and you are constantly drinking poison, and expecting the other person to die.
It's like when you are in traffic and someone cuts you off. You might honk at them or not, but either way you scream profanity in your car, or seethe inside for the remainder of the drive home, nursing your anger and your hurt for far longer than the actual event. This is poisoning your soul, and you are the one doing it to yourself! You are the only one poisoning you. The other person either doesn't realize what they did, doesn't care, and has already forgotten about it, because it's not important to them. Your anger does not harm them in any way, shape or form....but it is like pouring acid on your soul. Again, only you are harming yourself.
For many years I lived in victim mode. I was comfortable there; I had a sob story I could pull out and make people feel bad for me. And it was a horrible story. But staying in the victim mode also allowed me to not live up to my potential. I didn't have to take risks, didn't have to be vulnerable to people, as long as I nursed my victim story. It was easier to get sympathy from people than actually live up to my capabilities. After all, I was used to it, and I had learned from the telling of the tale how shocked people were by my abusive childhood. So if I didn't succeed at something, I had a fall-back story to rely on for why I didn't succeed.
What I didn't realize until I read enough recovery books is that the only person perpetuating the victim myth....was me. I had a choice whether I wanted to let my parents win or whether I was going to win and live life on my own terms. Every time I told the victim story, my parents 'won' because I was living as a result of them.
So I had to go through anger. A lot of anger. I truly believe you can't get to forgiveness until you have lived thru the anger. Anger is a hot emotion, but it is a cleansing emotion if used properly. You can use the white hot heat of anger to burn away the victim story. You can cleanse yourself if you will allow yourself to finally experience your anger....but then you MUST let it go. If you don't let it go, it will consume you and leave you a pile of ashes. Use the anger to burn off the outer defense mechanism layer of your person. You don't have any more anger inside of you than what you can handle. Trust me, you've lived this long with the anger simmering below the surface. You've carried around the hot coals of hate, shame, humiliation your whole life. You are used to the burden. God will help you burn the pain away if you will allow it.
So, who do you have for forgive? I started with my mother, as I had the most issues with her. I was very angry with her....she cut me out of her will....now I wasn't angry over not getting money. I mean, the money would have been nice; I'm not a hypocrite. But that's not what I was angry over. What I was angry over was that she put in a public document, for all the world to see, the fact that she never wanted me. I had lived with the "I wish you had never been born" and the "I should have flushed you down the toilet" and "if you had been born a redhead I would have killed you" and the "Susy, you have to understand, you're strong, and your brothers are not. I always have to love the underdog more". All painful things, but I was able to keep moving forward because deep in my heart I had told myself, it's her disease, it's her schizophrenia talking, it's not real. But forever she changed my life (victim story) when her will was read.
All the old anger, hate, thwarted unrequited love, pain, humiliation, shame that I had felt for 30 years and had repressed, repressed, repressed, poured out of me. I burned with anger and hate for her. I hated my siblings, hated my father, hated myself most of all. What was wrong with me that she couldn't love me?
I drank emotional poison for several years, nursed the long necked drinks of anger night after night, day after day. I so filled my body with poison I couldn't believe people were around me and couldn't see me drowning in front of them in agony. But I had learned to hide so well behind a mask as a child that no one saw my pain.
I lived this way for several years. And I read books. One pivotal book was "The Courage to Heal" by Bass. This is a book about incest survivors. To this day I don't know if I am an incest survivor, but I know I am an abuse survivor, so when I went thru the exercises in this book , I just substituted 'abuse' for 'incest'. Abuse is still abuse, whatever form it takes.
What I learned from reading that shatteringly good book is this: I had to forgive my mother, I had to forgive my father.....but most importantly, I had to forgive myself. I had to forgive myself for being a tiny defenseless child and 'allowing' myself to be abused. I had to to forgive myself for being a child. I had to forgive myself for not protecting myself.
Forgiveness does not come easily; in fact I think it is one of the hardest things a person can do. It's easy to say 'I forgive you" but it's much harder to actually forgive, to stop re-opening the scab of resentment and picking at the sores. Forgiveness is a gift of love and life that you give to yourself. It is a gift of true love to yourself. And no, it doesn't happen at once. You might start with forgiving small acts of another. You don't have to forget, but you need to forgive. And you need to forgive those small acts over and over and over again, until one day you can talk about whatever happened that used to hurt you, and it will be like talking about a story that happened to someone else. It just doesn't hurt any more.
And from that platform of forgiveness of a small thing, you can dredge up the courage to tackle some wrong done to you that was bigger or more hateful. And you will need to forgive and forgive and forgive over and over and over again on the same thing until once again it looses its power to hurt you.
And then you go on to the next, larger wrong, and then even larger wrong. You must forgive and forgive and forgive, again until the pain goes away.
Sometimes forgiveness happens in huge chunks. Other times you can forgive and heal a little, and then months will go by before you are ready to go thru the cathartic anger that leads to forgiveness. Be kind to yourself. You didn't get to where you are right now overnight. These pains and hurts and humiliations and shames have been festering for many, many years. Do not think that you will release them overnight. Their hold on you has been cemented over time with tears and grief.
But, like any other cement, you can take a sledgehammer to it and smack it really hard, and at least crack it. And in that cracked cement water (love) can flow in, and the next thing you know a small flower is growing in the crack. That flower is God's love for you, and that love grows stronger and stronger if you will let it. And so you watch a small flower, something so seemingly fragile, start to tear apart the concrete. And then you see more flowers and plants starting to grow and flourish in the cracks. The roots of love start pulling the concrete apart, and more cracks show up. And as you forgive and fill your soul with God's love, you will start to heal, and more flowers will show up. And eventually, just like any deserted yard left to nature, the flourishing plants of love, which are tougher and stronger than any anger or hate, will take over the concrete as if it was never there.
Does it happen overnight? No. I wish I had a magic pill for you and could make it all better with a kiss. But it doesn't happen that way. It happens with time and effort. And again, there is NOTHING inside of you that is stronger than you. NOTHING. You've survived this far with your anger, shame, humiliation and grief, and it hasn't won. So take hope from that, and shine a light of Love into the dark places of your soul.
I leave you with these words and much love and wish you the best on your healing journey.
I want to thank my wonderful husband Ernie, who has stood beside me these 15 years that I have struggled through my addiction to food, struggled to accept myself as who I am, love myself as me, and has helped me become a better person because of my relationship to him. May you be as fortunate and blessed with love as I have been. Please be open to it, even if you don't believe it's possible, even if you've never experienced it. It truly does exist in the world....even if you do your best to drive it away (which I did).
Ernie and Maggie
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