Growing up the way I did left me angry and bitter at the whole world around me. The survival skills I had adopted not only kept people who would hurt me away. They also cut off any help that would come my way. It was constantly not what I felt I needed or wanted. I always ended up trying to depend on them too much or demanding total control.
Time and time again I would smack people’s hands away. Eventually people stopped trying to help. That only fueled me more. ” How dare they not help me! Cant they see I am in pain ? Why won’t you help me ? ” It was a constant game of screaming ” Everyone just leave me alone!!” Anyone? Hello ?” A constant cycle of me pushing people away and then blaming them for leaving. It was a lonely miserable existence but one of my own making. Sure I did not get the ball rolling that was my early experiences in life’s job. However I am the one who chose to keep it rolling. Time and time again I would Alienate all who cared all who wanted to help.
The cycle was a deep rooted one and took many years for me to break. First I had to look at these situations and see where my part in them was. No matter what the situation was. Whether I felt I had a right to be angry or not. Whether it really was something shitty that happened. I had to look at all the incidents that I was reliving daily. The ones that where rotting me out from the inside. I had to find my part where I might be to blame and see how I could have done this better. In the incidents where I found no real wrong on my part I had to find forgiveness for their part. In fact in all incidents in my life I had to find forgiveness. It was the only way I found to true freedom from the past.
Finding this forgiveness was not easy in many of these situations. I found it easier if I was able to put myself in their shoes see it from there point of view. Then I could have empathy and compassion, For most of the time my abusers lived through the exact pain I did and once again it was that pain that allowed me to identify, care for and come to love my abusers . Some of them only enough to see what pain had done to them. In others it allowed me to love them with all my heart and soul again whether I allowed them back in my life or not. It was my love for them that freed me from my suffering .
My chains have always been of my own making no matter the cause. Experience gives me the raw material and I have the choice to either build chains and a cage over my heart or to use this material to build a stairway to freedom. To use the pain to block out all things that would help me leaving me isolated and alone or take that pain and use it as a spring board for growth.
We are all entrusted with a certain amount of pain in our lives it is unavoidable. Some more than others. I believe the point to all this pain is to be the touchstone of growth. To give us something to make us uncomfortable. I have found for me at least that I do not just decide to change things it takes a certain amount of pain to motivate me. To move me enough to realize something has to change. As I get stronger in my practice I am able to see the need for change with less and less suffering. I am becoming more sensitive to the things on my life that are ear marks for change. For this I am grateful. It no longer takes a building falling on me for me to realize its time to change now it only takes a house. One day I hope for a small shed or fence. We shall see.
Death clears all scoreboards. In the light of never seeing someone again, or feeling them, most things we keep score about seem very small and insignificant. It’s hard to see when you are in it, and they are alive. The hurts and expectations of change are all there, and strong brimming and bubbling right at the surface of our awareness. If they would just do this, or say that. Why can’t they just….