Finding forgiveness, in pain.

 

   At a certain point, you begin to understand that what your feeling, is becoming who you are. Emotions, hold such power within the human conscience, that- to an extent, they can shape an individual's mind. What begins as an emotional wound can, with the right catalysts and feeding, become more like a festering disease than just a small incident.
   A few days ago, someone very important to me snapped out in response to an (admittedly) sullen Lyndsey, "recently I feel like you've become angry at the world."
   Without hesitation, my sharp reply before leaving was, "there is just so much to be angry at."
   I have to admit, I went home and cried for a few hours after that. I was shocked with my answer. At first, I didn't understand why those particular words had come so easily, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized the truth to it. That I was angry. At everyone.
   Angry because they couldn't understand. Angry at myself for not being strong. I was angry for feeling swamped in emotions that I could barely begin to explain. I felt as though I was trying to stay afloat, and be the best person that I could be, and not only was that not good enough, but no one else seemed to be bothering to try to do the same. I felt deeply alone, in a way only the heart can feel.
   After these thoughts finally sank in, I began to realize that I was turning into exactly the person I'd spent so long running away from. A hollow, angry, and bitter individual. Intent on causing the pain I was feeling inside to those around me, simply because I didn't know how else to communicate it.
   To emphasize this, I'll go back to an example starting a few weeks ago when I became friends with an acquaintance I'd briefly known for a while. In the weeks following our friendship, the beginning trails of awareness about my newly forming personality slowly began to become apparent to me. The more we talked, the more I realized how hard in nature I had become. I felt like a dark disease, against the clarity of his light. In response to his kindness, I began to notice of how my responses usually entailed empty emotion. As I studied this further, It was as though I saw before myself a large invisible wall. A wall, which in retrospect of the situation, was meant to shield me from the world I was so clearly beginning to despise within my frenzied mind.
   Upon laying this bare to myself, I decided to try and step away from it for a moment. On a particular evening, when talking with this friend I introduced you too earlier, I voiced something of a slightly more personal topic than I usually got. Admittedly, this wasn't easy for me to do. On my part, it took a lot of conscious effort to bring the subject up. I mentioned a problem I was having and asked him for a little advice on the matter. In all candor, just telling him about this made me feel like I was staining his brilliant cape of liquid gold with the dark vapors streaming through my mental wall. So, to put it simply, I was astonished when he not only seemed delighted by my actual feelings, but let me keep talking. I hadn't expected the reaction I received. The looming wall within me distorted all sense of reality, in a way that gave everyone a brooding ulterior motive.
   The point of telling you this is to illustrate the point that more often than not, we let injuries from the past, build up into actual scars that impair us from functioning normally within society. Belittling your pain is not my goal here. However, prompting you to stop holding onto the past and accept that what you are living in now is the present, is my goal. The person you are in this moment is likely the person you will continue to be.
   Anger is like a poison. It saps away the energy from your limbs and instead expends it upon building a roaring furnace of hatred and despair. It will consume you.
   You have gone through a lot, and you will continue to go through a lot. Imagine a traveler, in the process of climbing up a steep cliff. Every time he sees a large rock that looks somewhat interesting, he slips it into his backpack. Eventually though, as he continues upwards, the accumulation of weight from his backpack and the strain upon his already weary body are too much for him to handle. Instead of simply leaving the rocks behind though, the traveler continues to stubbornly push on, even though his trembling fingers can no longer grasp the jagged sides of the mountain and his calls for help can no longer form in his gasping lungs. He lets go, and he falls, just as every sensible person could predict he would.
   Much like the traveler, if we continue to pile up every pain and tragedy that has happened to us within our backpacks, we will someday fall too. No matter how many times you cry for someone to help you, there is nothing they can do unless you first learn to help yourself. You are the one in control. You are the one on the mountain piling the rocks into your backpack and brashly continuing on. Just let them go! Let the past, be the past. Let your anger, turn to forgiveness. As you do this, not only will you begin to climb faster and higher up that mountain of life, but you will eventually reach the top without those regrets latched onto your back.
   You have the power, to forgive and forget. Don't try to hold onto those feelings, just because you want everything back.
   I'm beginning to understand that we can both retain the good of our lives, while learning to leave behind the bad. They aren't what makes you who you are, and they won’t help you to move forward. There are lights burning around you that you can't enjoy behind your anger and hurt.

   

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer. - Albert Camus