RE: What is forgiveness and what is not?
February 7, 2019 at 4:46 pm
(This post was last modified: February 7, 2019 at 4:48 pm by bennyboy.)
I have a little narrative to share that I hope can shed light on this.
When I was a kid, my parents were already divorced. I lived with my mom-- she alternately neglected or abused me. In my teens, she often said stuff like, "I love you biologically, because I"m your mom and I can't help it, but I really don't like you as a person." Or, she just called me a "little piece of shit" a lot.
I went to live with my dad. In about 2 months, he learned that I'd been ditching classes. He gave me $300, told me to get out of the house and never come back, and that was it-- me on the streets a the age of 15.
I forgave my father because the common opinion about him was that he was incapable of getting along with people-- he just didn't have the personality to get along with a teenager. But today, my daughter is living with him (Korean schools are a fucking nightmare, so I took a chance). They are getting along famously.
But that turns out to be hard for me-- it turns out that my father DOES have the personality to get along with a teenager, and he CAN live happily together with someone. That has kind of rewritten history for me-- all that abuse on the streets, from dirty old pervs on one side and cops on the other, all those cold nights, all the drugs that I took just because they made me feel warmer or less hungry.
It's actually put me in a state of crisis-- I'm happy because my daughter is doing okay in Canada. However, the only way I can continue to forgive my apparently full-functioning social father is to take the blame onto my own shoulders: I have to identify as the non-functional one, and say that going maybe right back to my childhood, the problem has always been me. That's not easy to do, and then still get up in the morning.
When I was a kid, my parents were already divorced. I lived with my mom-- she alternately neglected or abused me. In my teens, she often said stuff like, "I love you biologically, because I"m your mom and I can't help it, but I really don't like you as a person." Or, she just called me a "little piece of shit" a lot.
I went to live with my dad. In about 2 months, he learned that I'd been ditching classes. He gave me $300, told me to get out of the house and never come back, and that was it-- me on the streets a the age of 15.
I forgave my father because the common opinion about him was that he was incapable of getting along with people-- he just didn't have the personality to get along with a teenager. But today, my daughter is living with him (Korean schools are a fucking nightmare, so I took a chance). They are getting along famously.
But that turns out to be hard for me-- it turns out that my father DOES have the personality to get along with a teenager, and he CAN live happily together with someone. That has kind of rewritten history for me-- all that abuse on the streets, from dirty old pervs on one side and cops on the other, all those cold nights, all the drugs that I took just because they made me feel warmer or less hungry.
It's actually put me in a state of crisis-- I'm happy because my daughter is doing okay in Canada. However, the only way I can continue to forgive my apparently full-functioning social father is to take the blame onto my own shoulders: I have to identify as the non-functional one, and say that going maybe right back to my childhood, the problem has always been me. That's not easy to do, and then still get up in the morning.
