I was reading up on some posts today and saw a few that got me in the mood to write down what I've been thinking about lately. I think about the things that I've done to other people and the bad decisions I have made, as well as the kind of person my choices made me into. Sometimes it's easy to lapse into thinking I'm still that person from only a few years ago that didn't care about anyone else and walked all over people just because I could.
Then I go further back and remember why I was so vindictive and hateful, it was from my heart knowing everything my head beleived was wrong, the irreconcileable differences between what I was taught to be the truth, what I thought family was, and what I saw it to really be. My family on my father's side is deep in the truth, and the best a the fake smile and the "oh how have you been, we think about you all the time". I remember how my best friends (my first cousins) lived next to us and I thought it couldn; get any better. Then I think of how when my mother caught my dad with a 12 year old girl, the elders told her to stay with her husband like she's supposed to because there was no witness other than her. My "family" disintegrated so fast I never knew it happened. My mother did the right thing and left. From thinking you had all the friends in the world to zip in a week. Even worse, from then on everyone saw me as my father, whether they admitted it or not. Those who thought different and gave me a chance were "counseled" pretty quickly...I don't know that firsthand, but it's the only explanation for how quick warm went to cold seemingly overnight. We were abandoned for the most part, my mom was only 25 and had two kids with not even a diploma. No one ever checked on us except to stop in over about 2 years time and counsel her for not going back to her husband...even though he was using his visitation times with us over the same two years to take us to some ratty nasty trailer or hotel so he could screw this little girl. Seemed like everyone in town knew about it though...but the brothers still kept pushing. Got to have those two witnesses...and they have to be witnesses in good standing. Funniest thing of all...they disfellowshipped him...after the girls father got mad bcause my father wouldn't pay him a bigger monthly note and turned him in to the police. They even waited until after it was printed in the paper.
A lot of this I had blocked out...cognitive dissonance at it's best. These things festered and made me more angry without my knowledge, every look of disgust, every "pleased to meet you, hope to see you again" turning into "I didn't know you were so and so's son!" and an icy up and down look. All the times I was judged and set up to fail, all boiling up in a hate that ran to the bone. The things I did to some of those who hurt me was not right...revenge wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be...but it was cold, to be sure.
In the end, I became a lot of what people said I was all along...weak in the truth, materialistic, and worst of all, untrustworthy. I'm not that person anymore...but I still see the past play before my closed eyes, and regret many things I did in response to the hurt I felt. That doesn't make it ok at all, I wish I could have figured it all out sooner.
Do you suppose a person can ever really lose the guilt they feel for hurting so many others, or is it something that at best becomes like an old broken bone that never really heals right and always aches, especially on rainy days?
WLG