I have many goals for myself as a writer of blog and book. One of the biggest ones is to be brave enough to say things that are honest. Being vulnerable in my writing is never easy and sometimes it’s absolutely painful–but it’s essential. And so I muddle through because when I’m honest I do my best writing and I’m my best self.

Some days I understand things. I love those moments. They are the times when I can see the forest through the trees. They are the dark nights when the big picture rises like the full moon and the truth of it can’t be ignored. I feel like I glow. Those days are not as frequent as I’d like them to be, although they’ve gotten more plentiful as I’ve pushed myself to grow as a person.

But there are also days when it doesn’t matter what I know about myself. Like a two-year-old having a tantrum, I close my eyes and I pound my fists against the earth and send all my energy back into the ground where it never has a chance to fly. It feels like there is no light to see my big picture, never mind that my eyes are closed. I’m too angry or hurt or insecure to care. I hate those days.

I often think that if I were smarter, I wouldn’t be so embarrassed at my response (at the age of 43) at being picked on by the mean kids. I forget that hurt and embarrassment are not age specific. I need to remind myself that my soul doesn’t wear kevlar and I would never want it to. I need to be more forgiving of myself when old hurts resurface–it means they haven’t healed yet–I’ve just tamped them down. I know this because I’ve had the experience of arriving at true forgiveness. Like a bird taking flight, the ugliness leaves you and it doesn’t need to fly back. You’ve set it free. You physically feel lighter. But I haven’t been feeling light. In fact I’ve been feeling heavy. Pain seems to have it’s own kind of gravity.

And it’s weird, because people who make you feel bad about yourself, don’t just do you the pleasure of making you feel like less of a human being. They also make you wonder what you could have done to prevent or fix the problem. They make you go searching high and low for your own damn flaws. Or at least they do that for me. In fact, they make me a little squirrelly. Like a hungry, furry thing looking for a nut. I run around trying to find the fine line between being a good person and being a chump. I usually end up looking like a fool trying to sit in the corner of a round room. And then, ironically, I feel even worse for looking and feeling like a fool.

If I were to hazard a guess, I bet those people, who way too often consume my thoughts and emotions, don’t really think about me much at all. The thought of that makes me laugh while holding my queasy stomach. It’s a little sickening. Partly because they have so much power and partly because I let them in to use it.

One of the things I find myself doing more and more now, is talking about these people to other people. The reason I do this is because I’m always too afraid to look the real problem in the eye and tell them my truth. I have conversations in my head where I step up and say the way I feel, but I never seem to be able to do it, so I’m like a tea kettle rumbling and boiling with things that need to be said. That head of steam has to have somewhere to go. So I talk about it to people who don’t make me feel bad about myself.  I hate doing it, being a fountain of negativity where the ugly stuff just keeps flying back and hitting me with it’s spray, but it’s hard to stop. I tell the stories that I can’t find an answer to, but what I’m really doing is asking a question…Are those people telling the truth about me?  Because I no longer know for sure who I am when I use them for a mirror. What I’m asking is…Do you think I’m a good person?  

I’ve been carrying their heaviness for so long I don’t remember what it felt like before they were sitting on my shoulders tapping on my brain, chipping away at my self esteem. But what I do know is that I don’t want to do it any more.

I always say I can’t write faster than I can grow. But I forget to remind myself that I can’t forgive any quicker than I can find my own enlightenment either.

But I have tools, better options then to go around besmirching the reputations of people who are likely doing a fine job of it themselves. You know about those leopards and their spots.

I’m not quite there yet, but I’m on my way to one of those good days where I understand things again. Writing this is a step in the right direction. I’ve peeled off one layer of ugly and everything is just a little lighter. Which reminds me that words on paper, are a better use of my energy. Writing is my yellow brick road to forgiveness–to walking away–without the desire to keep looking back to see who I am in the rearview mirror. It isn’t easy though, I’m still having trouble saying that I’m searching for forgiveness for these folks. I’ve even pulled out the thesaurus looking for a word that doesn’t make me feel quite so weak. But I guess I’m uncomfortable because I’m just not there yet. And that’s okay because there’s something reassuring in knowing that I plan on being there–eventually.