It’s the stupidest analogy I could ever come up with, but maybe that’s the point: When all the scandal came out about Bill Cosby, I was torn up that he was such a bad person, but at the same time, I got so angry at all these people saying he wasn’t funny because I thought he was. I remember watching him as a kid on Saturday morning cartoons. The first vinyl record I ever bought was a Bill Cosby comedy special. He may be an immoral bastard, but that doesn’t change the fact that I thought he was funny and for years and years I laughed at his jokes. While I thought he was funny, there’s nothing he could have said or done that would change the image of the monster he was and is to the women he hurt.
My biggest problem is that I have been too self-centered in my own view of my mother. She was a manipulative lying abuser for me. She took every opportunity to hurt me that she could, but she was so effective with the gaslighting and everything else because I was the only one. There’s no one else who experienced her the way that I did. For everyone else, they got this fun-loving wonderful person. No one else got the codependent brain-washing monster that I had to run away from. That image is so far from what everyone else got they wouldn’t even believe me if I told them my truth. It’s the final twist of the knife. Because I just want to protect myself and instead of looking like the person I am, I am going to look like the person she says I am: a cold, unfeeling, hateful, daughter. When all I really want is to be me, separate from her. It’s all I have ever wanted. My entire life I have been punished and ridiculed for wanting that. It got so bad that I thought I would be better dead than alive. My body is such a wreck because I have been through so much trauma and from being on a heightened sense of alert for such a long time.
How do I forgive when I feel such pain and humiliation? God says to forgive seventy times seven. Seek to forgive instead of being forgiven. The way I feel shouldn’t be as important as how I chose to feel, right? I guess that the lesson that God is trying to teach me these days. Life happens. How I feel is going to happen, too. There’s nothing wrong with feeling those feelings. If I hate, if I fear, and even if I envy, etc., it’s okay to feel those feelings. I just shouldn’t dwell in them. I shouldn’t let those things have any importance in my life. Instead, I should focus on what I can control. I should choose how I am going to feel.
I think although my analogy at the beginning was horrible, I have a good example to end this post. I have been having a cluster migraine headache. It is the tenth day of the headache. I am in pain and I am afraid it isn’t going to end. It’s okay to be in pain and to be afraid, but I am not going to dwell in those feelings. Even though I feel pain and fear, I am going to also choose faith, courage, and patience. I know God is going to see me through this. I choose to be faithful, courageous and patience in my fear and pain. Being courageous and brave is about choosing to endure even when I am afraid. Being patience is about letting things happen on God’s time even when I am in pain. Being faithful is choosing God instead of just letting life happen to me.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
