Sometimes, really bad stuff happens to us. Really bad stuff. It doesn’t just leave a scar; it leaves you broken inside. People act like they care, or they understand, but you know they don’t. They think they do; they tell you time will heal all hurt, but you know what has happened inside you can’t be healed. It’s forever. That’s how you know they don’t get it.
Time won’t heal all the bad things they did, all the shitty things that happened. But you learn how to live with it, right? You survive.
I would love to feel like a good person. I want to be a good person, even if I don’t really know if I even believe in good or evil. I still want to do good and be confident that I am a good person. But, I can’t.
The bad things that happened to me, it didn’t stop. It continued for years, getting worse and worse all the time. It was like being stuck in a whirlpool, getting dragged deeper and deeper into the abyss until all light was gone and nothing remained but the pain of drowning.
Sometimes, the bad things continue for an exceedingly long time. Hours, months, years even. It doesn’t matter how long it continues because while it’s happening it feels like time is standing still and when it’s over it feels like it was a lifetime.
Then, as time passes and the bad things becomes memories, we might start to believe that we’ll be fine. Life is precious and good. We survived and inside we know it is a miracle to be alive today, yet it doesn’t feel like it. We know we’ll be fine, though, so everything is going to be fine. Maybe we even start to believe that we are fine. The past is in the past, what does it matter now?
We live this new life without realising we are not okay until one day we realise we aren’t okay.
Suddenly, something happened. Perhaps, someone said something or did something completely unrelated to what happened to us, and we realise we are not okay. We never were.
We were simply grateful to be free.
We never realised the cage we thought we had broken free from didn’t break – it merely grew in size.
It’s heart-breaking, but don’t give up yet. You survived the bad stuff when it happened, so you can most assuredly survive the consequences of what happened too.
You want to be happy, and so you shall be. I know, because I know I’ll be happy too one day. It doesn’t matter what they did to me, because I’m still here. You are here too.
We are alive. The only thing required to find happiness one day is to be alive.
So, how about we start breaking down that cage of ours?
Yeah, I’m still in one too. I’ll get out though. First step: Acceptance.
I’m not okay yet. I never was. Not since any of it happened.
The “yet” is important. Don’t say you’re not okay, say you are not okay yet. Because the yet means we’re working on it.
I’m not going to talk about the bad things that happened to me in this post, because it’s not important. The details are not important. We don’t need to know the specifics of the bad things that happened, we need to know the consequences.
The same bad things can happen to many people and bring about very different consequences. Your pain isn’t necessarily the same pain as someone else’s pain just because you lived through the same things – it might be, it might not. The facts are gone, we can’t go back to the past and confirm anything anyway and our memories aren’t perfect. Just because some of the details we remember aren’t perfectly clear, whatever happened still affected us. The pain all has the same core, because it’s pain. It’s the same essence.
Maybe they tell you, like they always told me, that it’s not your fault. Your head might understand this, but that doesn’t mean your heart agrees.
It’s difficult not to think about all the things we could have done differently to get a different result, but we didn’t do anything different. We made our choices and so did they. They made their choice.
My heart told me to avoid all the things that might bring me pain like what broke me, so I did. I protected myself.
I thought that if I avoided as many people and places and things as possible, then no one would ever hurt me again. I cared only for people I could never be with, because then I would not get hurt and nor would anyone else. I promised to keep myself from being hurt again, but I didn’t keep my promises. I started believing I was going to be okay and tried opening up, only to be hurt worse than ever. Every time I thought I’d be okay and tried opening up, something even worse than what happened before would happen to me. I started thinking I was being punished, I just didn’t know by who or why. Maybe I was cursed. Maybe I was a bad person and that was why bad things always happened to me.
So, not long ago I decided enough is enough. I can’t do it anymore. If I avoid everyone else for the rest of my life, then I’ll be okay. My heart is saying, you’ll be fine now. You’ll be fine.
It’s just also saying, you’re sad because you know you’ll never feel safe again. You were only able to feel safe before because you didn’t know what people were like. Over the years, over the course of your life, you became increasingly aware of what they are really like and now all doubt has left you.
My heart is saying that my sadness is because, even though I pay the price of loneliness for the rest of my life, I’ll never feel safe again.
Removing all the things and people that might bring me pain doesn’t make me feel safe, it makes me feel even more scared.
Knowing this I still isolate myself and feel sorry for myself and my lonely heart. No friend, family member or partner shall ever break through to me, and yet, I long for something to relieve the pain.
Again, I would like to be a good person, but in spite of this I still can’t help but long for revenge.
I wanted revenge. I wanted all those who hurt me to regret it. I wanted them to hurt like I hurt and to bitterly regret what they did to me.
I want those who bullied me, who beat me and abused me, those who stole my innocence, the one who tried to steal my life from me, even those who merely belittled me or betrayed my confidence – I want them all to suffer deep regret. I want them to want me, to desire my heart and soul and then I want to break their hearts like they all broke me.
I want to hate them deeply and intensely, because if I don’t then I cannot ever obtain my revenge.
But… in the end, I can’t. I can’t hate them even though I want to. I can’t help but forgive them, even though I wish I didn’t.
I think, I forgave the people who hurt me, but I can’t let go of wanting it to have never happened. I want things to be different, and somehow, inside of me, if I could make them hurt, we’d be even.
Then it would make it all okay and then I’d be okay.
I can’t do it though. Even faced with the perfect opportunity to get revenge, I can’t.
Even while wanting revenge, I also don’t want to hurt anyone.
I want to feel safe again.
I want to feel loved and accepted for the first time.
I want to be happy again.
I want to never forget that I can find happiness as long as I live.
I want to live.
I want to live my life my way.
I don’t want to pay the price of other people’s actions.
What they did, they are the ones who did it. Not me. I might have been there, but that was all. I was there, things happened. Now I’m here, carrying the consequences of their actions. No more, they must carry their own burden. I won’t carry it as well.
Revenge won’t make me feel better, it will only make me like them. I am different from them, because I choose not to do anything like they chose to do before.
I may not be okay yet, but I will be. As long as I still want to hurt them like they hurt me, however, I won’t be. It made me hold on to a pain it was time to let go of.
At this very moment, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want revenge anymore. Just saying it out loud, writing it down here on these pages, makes me feel better. I have been angry at life because some things are out of my control, but some things in life are beyond our control and always will be. The past is one of those things. It happened and that’s all there is to it.
Our actions today and tomorrow, we are in control of those. Only thing is, the past was once my future, once my present and I was in control of my actions leading up to all that happened. How do I know it won’t happen again, won’t be worse?
Well, I don’t know. I can’t know. But honestly, it wasn’t my actions that determined what happened, it was their actions. No matter what I do, I can’t control other people.
No matter what happens, no matter who hurts me or what they do to me, though, I can choose to let go and forgive it, because I am worth it. I want my life to be happy, so I won’t avoid everyone or everything anymore. I’ll face the world head on and not back down from finding my happiness. When people hurt me, I won’t hold on to that hurt anymore. I won’t let my pain define me.
I will let my happiness define me.
