forgiveness

There are certain things that I've never forgiven myself for and they often come into my thoughts early in the morning when I'm just waking up. No matter the 12 steps, no matter how sick they made me, nor how long I've carried them around, I just can't bring myself to let them go. I can't get past the notion that I've not attoned for these things and that somewhere the people I've wronged, some of whom are dead, remember these things against me; even in death. And they have not forgiven me either.

There's a notion promulgated by therapists and mental health professionals that I must forgive myself and accept forgiveness from others. But I don't see how. As I get older these things get more pronounced. The one that awoke me this morning was making someone give up something for me, a high school boyfriend... And he missed something that he shouldn't have. And a year later he was gone. I torture myself with that and I have for 25 years. After 25 years it seems more important, because I'm a parent and I think of all the things I want for my children. This boyfriend's mother must feel that kind of regret about me: why did I hurt her son? Why did he die? If he was going to die, couldn't he have had a nicer girlfriend who would make sure he did all the things he should have done before he died, instead of one who held him back? She held him back out of selfishness and insecurity. Shame on her.

The rational part of me (or I might say the evil part) tries to say that it was just as much in his control as mine - to say whether we stayed or went to that dance. It says that I can't make up history and decide that this was an all-important life experience that he regretted missing. I really don't know what he thought of it. All I know is that it was a puppy-love, teen-age romance that is forever colored in my mind because he died. Because of that, everything I did or didn't do, all of my insecurities that played out on someone else's life, my inability to be a normal teen-ager at that time have tormented me. I think, 'I should have done things differently'. I wish I could call him up and laugh about it now - how I wouldn't go, how strange and wierd I felt inside about all those budding feelings, how I hated all that and just wasn't ready for it. I think now how unprepared I was to have any sexual feelings and how I was overwhelmed by growing up.

I realize now how all of this was fertile ground for growing mental dis-ease and disorder. And they grew tall and put down deep and substantial roots. No wonder I was so sick. Sometimes I think I could so easily get sick all over again. Like a mouth sore that I wish I could avoid, I'm drawn to this pain over and over; I keep sticking my tongue in it, making it hurt more. I had a dentist once who said the toungue is an exaggerator; a sort of drama queen, enlarging everything it feels. I don't want to be indulgent with this painful memory or the many others that I dredge up. There's the whole bit about my best friend in high school - that mess. I don't want to be indulgent, but there are things that happened, that I felt and did, for which it seems there is no forgiveness.