experience has taught me this:
the deeper you go into someone’s story,
into someone’s psyche,
the more you understand, the more context is given,
the straighter the facts are,
the greater the stores of forgiveness that are accessible.
Time and time again, I have come to see this.
Therefore, I’ll save myself the trouble,
save myself the time,
and simply forgive everyone in advance.
…
Nothing is to be taken personally.
We all wear blindfolds, so wounded by past hurt that we cannot see the trail of further burdens we leave behind us.
I’ve come to see forgiveness is the removing of the blindfold, for only through forgiving does the illusion that anyone truly meant to hurt us dissipate.
But why oh why is forgiveness so painful? It is a band-aid ripping that takes with it deeply lodged splinters, leeches, and ticks, these parasitic entities that are our past experiences… these toxins we’ve become attached to, holding on so stubbornly, morosely…
Perhaps the pull of the familiar is so great that we’d trade the promise of happiness for the comfort of the dull misery we know. Perhaps the pain of re-examination and excavation is too great.
Not for I. It’s a pain I’d choose, for I know the joys that exist on the opposite end of this treacherous parapet. It is a herxheimer reaction — it gets worse before it gets better.
I willingly allow myself to feel the lows in beautiful catharsis, for I know they are the labor pains of the birth of love ever-more sublime and sweet. I know the mercy of the universe defies Newton’s third law, for the blisses to come will be far greater than equal and opposite in proportion to the difficulties of the healing process.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 