This past week was incredibly painful. Last night I read an entry in the Archdiocese of Chicago's Young Adult Ministry Lenten Reflection Blog about the difference between pain and suffering. Christina shares this insight, "We as humans are able to tolerate so much pain – knowing that our pain is getting us somewhere or it is some form of tough love. But when our pain isn’t productive, we can easily begin to suffer in our disappointment."
The pain I experienced this past week was emotional pain, yes, but it did not quite reach the threshold of suffering. I cried and sobbed and grieved, but it was part of the process I'm in. I finished writing all my resentments, what they affected, and what my part was for grade school on Wednesday night. I was only 14 years into my 28-year life story, and already I saw patterns. I easily saw the reasons why I couldn't seem to make or keep friends, and I easily saw how little self-esteem and self-confidence I had from the time I was very little. I saw how I got stuck in my head and relied on my own distorted views of life because I was an only child, a latchkey kid, and didn't have any peers or reliable adult role models. I saw how clingy I was, how hard I tried to fit in, how I tried to force friendships and connections and shut down when things didn't seem to be going my way. I saw how selfish I was, but I grieved for the little girl who felt she had to be that selfish to survive.
Immediately after grade school is high school, obviously, and I discovered something I probably knew in the back of my mind but didn't really address until I started writing. The first resentment on my high school list is actually my #1 resentment from my entire life, which is amazing to me. However, the three years I spent on dance team were probably the last three years I ever truly threw my entire heart and soul into something. And I was constantly let down, constantly left out, constantly not good enough. When I finally decided to quit dance team after junior year, it was also when my friendships with people I'd known since 9th grade were getting flushed down the toilet because of a stupid mistake on my part (and an unwillingness to try and reconcile/work it out on their part). Writing about dance team was the hardest writing I've ever had to do. It physically made me ill, and I could hardly put pen to paper. I wrote about choir next, another set I struggled to stay detached from while writing. Next I'm writing about that group of girlfriends where everything went wrong and I've been ostracized from them for 11 years. High School does not have a lot of positive memories for me, and I know it'll all be hard writing. I'm trying to keep pushing through and keep writing, but it is painful.
But like Christina distinguished, it has not moved into the stage of suffering. This pain has a purpose, absolutely 100% has a purpose. The 12 Steps are about Awareness, Acceptance, and Action. I'm becoming aware of my patterns, my former ways of doing things. I have to learn to accept them, accept the past that happened, and then let it all go. I have to accept that sometimes I'll still act out of these deep-rooted patterns, but I can now let them go and accept whatever outcome. I can also take action - I can't change the past, but I can make amends and apologize for wrong-doing on my part. I can also change my behaviors so I don't continue the patterns to the best of my ability in the future. All of this requires an enormous courage and reliance on God. There are days I feel it, there are times I know I'm taken care of and loved by a wise and wonderful and gentle and loving higher power. But writing about high school, I just feel all the crap, I don't feel loved, and so I struggle with that reminder that God loved me then and still loves me now.
What I have to remember is this: I am not the same person I was 14 years ago when I started high school. I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago when I graduated, or 6 years ago when I left college, or 3 years ago when Sully and I broke up, or 18 months ago when I entered the rooms for the first time. I am not the same person I was, AND I DON'T HAVE TO BE! I get to be different today. I get to choose how I want to act, and what I want to say. I can choose a more loving, caring, gentle, happy track. I don't have to rely on other people to tell me who I am or tell me I'm accepted. I get to find and create and have my OWN identity. I get to know I'm loved and accepted, just by trusting in God, and learning to love and accept myself.
I know I still struggle with some of the patterns I'm seeing. The boy at work is getting the same treatment my dear friend Ryan did all throughout college. How and why Ryan stuck around I will never know, because I was completely crazy with him. But he did, and he's now one of my dearest friends, and his fiance Julie is as well. I struggle with feeling like I have to force connections with people I feel connected to - I just want to create that intimacy and have that friendship and I want it NOW. Sometimes I can let it go, and just let things take time. Sometimes, I can't. Luckily, I think I'm learning to pull back and RELAX and breathe quicker than I did before, so even when I get intense and needy and pushy, like I did this week when I was caught up in all the emotion and grief of my 4th step, I can pull back and let go a little bit easier. I don't have to put up a wall or shut down my emotions, I just need to be more appropriate with how, where, when, why, and to whom I express them.
It's a learning process, and a painful one sometimes, but I'm getting there.
No comments:
Post a Comment