Forgiveness

 Urm, I want to blog today but the things I started writing need research (and are now sitting in my drafts), the guide I want to write on I haven't world-building even started yet and I don't feel qualified to talk about very much else at the moment. 

So, I don't really know what to post. 

Last week I talked about love, which feels like something I think about a lot. I'm caught in a catch-22, scared of losing myself in someone else's life but also wanting someone to walk alongside me. I worry that I'm codependent and determined that I don't want to walk that path again. That's one of those things I'm working on in therapy. While I'm a lot less neurotic than I was even a couple of years ago, I'm conscious that there's still a lot of self-discovery and learning to do, and I'm continually growing and developing as a human. Which is all positive, especially when I consider where I was when I started therapy. 

I'm not going to say therapy saved my life, but it helped immeasurably, assisting me to let go of the feelings around a lot of the bad things that have appeared in my life. I've been able to slot them into their proper place and grow past things that were blocks. Within just over six months of therapy, I was ready to start divorce proceedings, while within around three I felt confident in saying I'm non-binary or agender, and able to put my old (and much hated) identity aside to embrace who I wanted to be. That feeling of being a failure and never being enough eased as I started to understand that I'd taken on scripts from other people and never moved past them. 

A big part of therapy, as far as I can tell, is learning to forgive yourself - because as a child (or maybe as an adult) you were always the problem, always the one at fault. You were the reason you couldn't have nice things. Letting go of that deep-seated belief is hugely important, and learning that you weren't the problem is hugely powerful. 

I don't mean that in a way that excuses any of the bad shit you may actually be doing. At the same time, I've come to realise that a) those shitty habits you may have could well be coping responses to the shitty situation where you learned them, and b) we can all change if we get the right help. Forgiving ourselves is the first step to understanding and forgiving others - or at least that's my belief. 

Easier said than done, though right? It didn't really come home to me until my therapist and I did Parts Work using this deck of cards. One of the images that really affected me was one of some children picking on a little boy. I really identified with the boy since I was bullied for most of my childhood. I was an odd, quiet child and my response to how things went was to isolate myself - a toxic habit I still have. My therapist surprised me by asking what I thought the other children were going through. 

It was the sort of question I'd never thought of before because my brain always defaulted to my bullies - whoever they were - having everything together and never being in pain. That was before I realised that when you're carrying trauma it becomes your entire world, and you're always seeking to escape from it. Sadly, that can take the form of bullying other people to distract you from your own pain. 

The realisation gave me a lot more empathy for those who felt they had no other choice but to lash out like that because though bullying is never right, it means they're as much victims as the people who don't follow that path. 

It also makes me sad, because how many people are carrying trauma around like a monkey on their backs? How many of those people will never seek help because part of their socialisation (especially if they're male) has been to shut up and just get on with things? How many turn to coping mechanisms like booze or drugs, or seek to lose themselves in video games or TV because it's just easier to zone out and enter a fantasy world instead of trying to heal? That feels especially true in a culture obsessed with appearance - especially the appearance of harmony within the family unit - and performativity, where the Almighty Currency dictates that nothing may come before it. A society where we're encouraged to talk and think about the superficial instead of looking under the surface. 

For me, these pieces of knowledge came as a game changer and I could start to accept myself as a flawed human being, and a person who is going to forget things, or get flustered, because I'm human not because I'm deficient. 

So do me a favour, forgive yourself for those small things, seek help for the bigger ones and accept yourself as a whole ass human.