Forgiveness... Even If You Don't Love Me Anymore
I'm watching a TV show right now where the daughter (the product of her mother's affair with a married man) is angry with her mother for depriving her of the large, noisy, boisterous family that was her father's other life, raising her in isolation. It's fictional situation with contrived responses, but the actress playing the mother had hurt in her eyes, and I thought, "Why can't people be gentle with one another's feelings? Why can't the daughter respect that her mother did the best she could knowing what she knew? Where's the respect?"
Hurt feelings know no respect. Feelings know no respect. We can't control them, though we can sit on them, suppress them, or otherwise ignore them, at least for a time. But they don't go away... "The Law of the Conservation of Feelings." We can resolve them, however, but putting an end to the damage they do to us in our decision-making and futures. I don't understand the process of how this happens.
When my grandmother died in 1994, it was the first time I ever felt crashing around me. She was an anchor in my young life, a presence as irrefutable as the sun coming up in the east. Living without her was incomprehensible; it was the most frightening thing I had ever done to that point. But I was able to do it because I remained convinced of her flawed yet encompassing love of me, and I knew that in a way, her death didn't change the love. But then, so much of what happened in the two years that followed... my dysfunctional relationship that led to a decade of fears... meeting my ex-husband... moving to Texas... all positively correlate to losing her. Am I over her being gone? Of course I am... it was her turn to go, and I can't blame someone from dying against her will. But used to her being gone... that took time... and it hurt... and it doesn't hurt now, but I still wonder about her sometimes... where she is, what she'd think about how all of us have changed. But death... death is guaranteed, death I understand. Death is an equalizer, and nobody can take it personally, not really.
Could I rush that? No. And it didn't happen positively. It was a struggle. It involved a great deal of time. It wasn't a conscious effort. It wasn't reflective or introspective. I did a lot of dumb and stupid things that I could not have possibly done had my grandmother been there. And then I left town entirely and started over in a place that had nothing to do with my grandmother or the life I'd lived before.
How do people get over things? Maybe some are masters of their feelings. Some are devoid of feelings, I guess. Some become victimized by their feelings. Some learn the hard way. I'm in that group. Why is it always so freaking HARD? Why do I have to be afraid at all? Why are my feelings betraying me? Disrespecting me? Stupid disrespectful feelings.
So there's finally a guy online whom I want to meet... however scared I am. I need to just damn the torpedoes and GO FOR IT. I finally want to... if I don't think too much about it. Damn torpedoes, anyway.
Hurt feelings know no respect. Feelings know no respect. We can't control them, though we can sit on them, suppress them, or otherwise ignore them, at least for a time. But they don't go away... "The Law of the Conservation of Feelings." We can resolve them, however, but putting an end to the damage they do to us in our decision-making and futures. I don't understand the process of how this happens.
When my grandmother died in 1994, it was the first time I ever felt crashing around me. She was an anchor in my young life, a presence as irrefutable as the sun coming up in the east. Living without her was incomprehensible; it was the most frightening thing I had ever done to that point. But I was able to do it because I remained convinced of her flawed yet encompassing love of me, and I knew that in a way, her death didn't change the love. But then, so much of what happened in the two years that followed... my dysfunctional relationship that led to a decade of fears... meeting my ex-husband... moving to Texas... all positively correlate to losing her. Am I over her being gone? Of course I am... it was her turn to go, and I can't blame someone from dying against her will. But used to her being gone... that took time... and it hurt... and it doesn't hurt now, but I still wonder about her sometimes... where she is, what she'd think about how all of us have changed. But death... death is guaranteed, death I understand. Death is an equalizer, and nobody can take it personally, not really.
Could I rush that? No. And it didn't happen positively. It was a struggle. It involved a great deal of time. It wasn't a conscious effort. It wasn't reflective or introspective. I did a lot of dumb and stupid things that I could not have possibly done had my grandmother been there. And then I left town entirely and started over in a place that had nothing to do with my grandmother or the life I'd lived before.
How do people get over things? Maybe some are masters of their feelings. Some are devoid of feelings, I guess. Some become victimized by their feelings. Some learn the hard way. I'm in that group. Why is it always so freaking HARD? Why do I have to be afraid at all? Why are my feelings betraying me? Disrespecting me? Stupid disrespectful feelings.
So there's finally a guy online whom I want to meet... however scared I am. I need to just damn the torpedoes and GO FOR IT. I finally want to... if I don't think too much about it. Damn torpedoes, anyway.
posted by bluedana @ 2:35 PM
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