August 16, 2008

• Unconditional Forgiveness

  Unconditional Love

  Do
  you know it? Have you experienced it either giving or receiving? Tell
  us about what you think it is … how you obtain or achieve it! Do
  believe it is possible?  Discuss it ~ won’t you?

  Make it silly or sad – serious or sappy – a song, poem, picture; it’s your post, it’s up to you!~

  
  

  When I was much younger than I am now…. way back in grade school (I feel so old)… I came to the conclusion that I would never be loved. Well, my family never really seems to have much use for me, even back then. I come from a “broken home,” and even now that I’m 34 my childhood affects me. Your past is inescapable. It not only shapes who you become, it never leaves you even if you manage to transmute the experience into something else. It’s always there, coloring all that you experience later, so that sometimes you see things other people can’t and sometimes making you blind to things they can. It’s really hard to say which vision is the illusion sometimes. Maybe both are and reality is what you make of it. Still your reactions to perceived experiences are experiences in and of themselves, so I suppose it’s moot.

  My father was a horrible person. I sympathize with his past. I know his childhood was not easy. But I can admit without hate that he was not a good person. He did terrible things to my mother and to me and my sister. When my mother finally left him, she left us with our grandmothers while she went on a kind of soul-searching tour of America. Our father promptly came for us, as was his right according to the law since there were no formal hearings to determine custody of us. I was three and my sister was one and a half. But he didn’t come because we were his children and he loved us. In fact, we were possessions to him, nothing more. He came and took us because he could. He didn’t have the time or inclination to care for us, so he placed us in foster care where I was abused. The only thing I know for sure is that they ripped out half my hair there when I didn’t want to go Church (even then I was a little Heathen I guess). I am still very sensitive about people touching my hair.

  My mother says that when she came back, I was not the same little girl. I was angry and mistrustful. That’s obviously understandable considering what I’d been through. If I was not before, my experiences made me a very solitary, reserved child. I watched people. I was careful and withdrawn in how I interacted with people. I was shy. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets you label as a weirdo in Elementary school. To this day, I am still very careful with people I do not know.
  

  I didn’t have any friends in school. I was bullied pretty much from day one. It came to a momentary lull in the fourth grade when I broke the biggest bully’s nose with a thrown math book. She never picked on me again, but that didn’t stop others. When I moved on to the Jr high school, it started all over again…. later coming to a head when I was “lynched” by a mob of some of my longtime bullies and their friends. The school and the police did nothing. If anything, it taught me to trust people even less. What little trust I had for “authority figures” and my mother pretty much went out the window. No one cared about me. That was the conclusion I came to. I had no friends, no one cared enough to protect me, and I could look forward to a life alone. The end.

  Having no one to talk to, I did a lot of thinking. At first, I really hated everyone. I hated them for rejecting me. I hated them for not loving me. I blamed people for my alienation, and I resented them. What had I ever done to deserve to be treated so badly? Why didn’t my mother love me the way she obvious cared about my sister and my little brother, child of a second marriage (that ended even worse than the first if you can believe it). Then I decided it was their loss. I was more worthy than they were even if they couldn’t see it. I loathed them and had nothing but contempt for my whole species. If evil alien overlords had arrived at that point, I probably would have cheered. (I still feel that the human race is largely unworthy of the beauty and bounty of our planet, but that’s neither here nor there.)
  

  It finally occurred to me that I could hate everyone and be just like them, or I could try to be better than the people who had hurt me. I mean, if I went around hating everyone, how did that invalidate the way I had been treated? It came to me that I might never be loved, but hating for that reason just me letting them make me what they thought I should be. Never been a fan of “them” or “they” or what “Other people” say. And I sure didn’t want to be in any way shaped by “them.”
  

  So it started with me trying to forgive the people closest to me, which I have been pretty successful in doing. It’s taken me years, but as much as they’ve hurt me and continue to hurt me, I don’t hate them for it. I love them very much and try to forgive them every time they do something thoughtless or selfish. They don’t know any better. I can just give them my love until they understand what they’re doing. Maybe they never will. The same goes for people I meet every day. I’m not saying I don’t get angry, but I try not to hold a grudge. I don’t hate anyone, not any more. That’s what other people do.

  
  

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  August 16th
  

  
  Tailte’s Day honors a Celtic goddess of competition. Games of skill and endurance similar to the Greek Olympics were once held annually in Ireland in early to mid-August.
  
  
  

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  • 1:19 pm
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