[Michah]

For many years I worked at forgiving my parents - my mother for being vicious and cruel and at times explosively violent and my father for thinking the best of everyone and being blind to the torment. I left my mother for 9 years and in that time I forgave her and not only that, I learned to love her unconditionally DESPITE what she had done. I went through unimaginable pain and grief and visits from her demons in the night and I cowered in fear and I wanted her to die.......then I embraced, knowing those demons were not my own. I took all her pain and faults and put it back inside her, which expelled them from me. I did not live through her anymore, I was not a "product of my environment"......I was free and I LOVED, despite the occasional setbacks.

I looked at my parents from the beneficial (but extremely difficult) position of objectivity and was able to forgive for the times that I thought I was going to die at the hands of my mother and the lack of truth that permeated our house - Lying to my teachers about marks on my body, lying to my father about my mothers affair, lying to the world about the fear that coursed through me and my abject terror of the world and of myself. I knew that my existence was both a blessing and a curse for my mother, for despite the fact that she looked after me impeccably, she wanted me gone as well. SHE did not know how to be a parent and she became one, not out of want, but out of some misplaced obligation. She loved me in her own strange way, she just couldn't live with her own self-loathing. And so the loathing and grudging respect was projected on to me.

Now I am sick, chronically ill. After years of embracing the dark, of loving unconditionally, I am faced with the cruelest and most terrifying situation. After a rare and somewhat unpleasant sobbing session in the foetal position in my shower on the weekend with my fiance crouching just outside the shower door, holding my hand, I declared with horror:

" I may have forgiven my mother for all that she did, for wanting me dead, but I have not forgiven her for keeping me alive to suffer like this. I have not forgiven her for having me at all".

AHH the truth of self. For it is my mission to delve once again where I have always feared to tread, for it is the true path to wellness and one thing I have learn't is that wellness is not free. I have done it once and I will do it again......my revelation on the weekend threatened to undo me, but freed me the same. The realisation that my suffering has sought a person or thing to blame, to hold accountable, has given me stillness in it's simplicity. I need to acknowledge that I have wanted someone to pay for my suffering, and who better than my mother?

But it is not her fault anymore than it is mine that I have become this unwell. It just is how it is and I shall try and walk this dangerous terrain with a deep breath and courage.........and try and love despite it all.

Michah

[Open Eyes]

The Pain we inherit from our youth, so hard, so very hard.

Open Eyes