A gentle trigger warning.
This post is not intended to shock. It is meant to frame something that needs to be said. There may, for some people, be triggers within the following text. No harm is intended and I hope you scroll down and read on.
I have wanted to write about this for a very long time, but I knew if I did, the writing had to be clear and constructive. An angry tirade in this case would serve no one well. Especially myself since as a dear friend said... There is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
This story is about FORGIVENESS, why it is so important, and worth pursuing.
On Day Eleven of this Thirty Day #WeBecomeWhatWeDo cultivation project I was up in the wee small hours of the morning having not yet made it to sleep from Day Ten. I was wondering about things, mainly my career choices and options for different avenues I could explore. Was I truly ready to explore them or just looking for reasons to complain about work?! As I lay in bed thinking it was about time to put those thoughts away and sleep I spotted a friend was up online on Facebook, and since I know she is ill at the moment I sent her some hugs. It turned out she was having a bad night, had woken up in terrible pain and was quite distressed. As we talked, she relaxed a little, and the pain and panic subsided slightly, she realised then she was probably awake for the next few hours until her next dose of medication. I suggested distraction was probably the way to go to fill the intervening time and, since she is unable to do much physically at the moment, some reading may be the best option. This friend is very encouraging, and we fell to talking about this very blog. I said she was welcome to read back through the archives as a distraction, but provided a gentle warning about the content of my post from late last year about sexual harassment. Being the encouraging soul she is she was compassionate about how that my have affected me a I found myself typing my disclosure of another incident... I didn't write angrily... just in a clear and concise way explained the situation...
"I was abused... In a specific scenario. I do not mind people knowing. But the current news has triggered some stuff. The blog is about how dismissive we are of inappropriate touch in teenagers."
The exchange continued and I expressed some feelings of guilt and regret.
You see the scenario I speak of happened over 20 years ago. It was a "one off" event, but that made it no less powerful in terms of changing the way I viewed my own body and that someone had definitely without my consent put their hands where they did not belong. This happened to me in such a strange circumstance that it did, for many years, make it easier to bury the experience entirely and to find ways of getting around it and the associated thoughts and feelings. However I did carry them with me into adolescence and young adulthood where with hindsight and realisation they became deeper ingrained and heavier to carry. I have been on a roller coaster with my mental health since around about the time of this incident, and although there are many other factors in my story overall, this one has insidiously glued itself to my sense of self worth and esteem and messed with my right to define my barriers and acceptable parameters in relation to what is tolerable behaviour from others. And so it was that from my friend I was reminded of a truth I have heard many times before...
"If you have suffered abuse in any form you should not feel guilty about it. However slight or however bad it is not your fault. The abuser is the guilty one and you must never let go of that."
Maybe her use of the words 'let go' were what triggered my response, but a penny dropped and I gave the most honest response to this advice I have ever given.
"He was just a young man himself. He is entirely forgiven."
And just at that moment as I said goodnight to my dear friend I was done burying my pain away, and letting it continue to be a burden. Because I considered for the first time how holding onto a hurt was serving me. Yes, the abuser was guilty in the sense that he was the one responsible for his own actions, but I am responsible for my reactions. His was the fault... But the burden of blame was hurting me and not him... If I had a time machine I would have done anything to prevent that event ever occurring. But it did happen and today's reactions are no time machine. I didn't have to let go of the truth of matter, I was never at any fault for the situation I was in, but I could let go of something else.... My anger... With no way of changing the past why should my reaction today be about regret and blame?
That whole process in my head took seconds to occur... And what I had typed and read before me was almost entirely new information even for me.
"He was just a young man himself. He is entirely forgiven."
You see what I had always said to myself was...
"He was just a young man himself. It was not his fault."
I was trying to be kind... I was trying to let him off... I was attempting compassion. I thought, mistakenly, that forgiveness meant finding a way to erase the incident. But it can't be, we can not change the past, just our response to it in the present moment. In trying to not find fault in what he did I was denying that it had indeed hurt me immeasurably. In accepting that he was at fault, but it was in my power to forgive him anyway I was not lying to myself anymore and there was peace in that.
I was not at fault.
He was.
Forgive him anyway.
If you are reading this and you are in a place of hurt and despair yourself you may be thinking... 'That's all very well for you to say, but it's not that easy'
I grew up in Christianity.
I was steeped in the idea that ALL I needed to do was forgive, and I tried so hard.
The moment I realised I was ready to forgive forever came after a lot of hard work and heartache, it was definitely not easy. But what had made it possible was the compassion of others, each time someone else held their own light close to me in my darkness a small part of my pain melted away until eventually after many, many years when I had carried my pain so long I thought it was too late and it would be with me forever, it became time.
Keep going, tell your story, share your truth with others and maybe even sometimes, tell them how much you are hurting.
Because even though there is no way someone else can entirely lift your burdens , carrying them alone is hard and letting go of them can happen slowly, but surely.
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