Forgiveness

  I was raised with the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. Those of you who didn't spend most every Sunday in Sunday school may not know this one, but it was one of the few that stuck in my head, along with the Good Samaritan. I actually had a difficult time with Joseph, he took off, left his brothers to do all the work, and then showed up after messing up his life, and Bam..his Daddy hands him all sorts of rewards, while the hard working brothers stand by. Yes..this was a story that taught forgiveness, and told of a Father's unconditional love.
  Well, Joseph's Dad was a far better person than I am! Forgiveness comes very slowly to me. I have become jaded as I have aged, I tend to just wash my hands of those who screw with me, and then I dwell on the matter...sometimes for many years. I find it extremely painful to be used, and once it is done, the walls go up instantly, and everything pertaining to that which hurt, is trapped inside the walls, open to dissection when the urge hits.
  Now..first off, don't get me wrong, I am capable of forgiving, I am also incapable of forgetting. Depending on the pain, I can go back to things, looking at them under a microscope, picking at all the tiny pieces, and digging through all the crap that covers them. Sometimes, there is a ton of crap, and sometimes it takes me a very long time to come to a place that I can piece things back together.
  Usually I don't get to the crap for a  long time.  I don't want to touch that which festers, and grows within the walls. At first, the walls grow higher and higher to contain the stuff inside. It's like yeast, it just bubbles and doubles and triples in size, it consumes my world. It causes me to shut all doors that may lead to the chance of any more pain. Then I begin to hate..that is a real energy consumer. Not sure about you, but when I hate, I give it my all, and that in turn sucks the rest of life right out of me.
  Like depression, hate is uncontrollable inside me. I can't stop it...little things continue to aggravate, and things snowball. I revel in this...I gloat when something pops out to allow me to stick it into the reason to hate, all along I understand I am making myself ill, but..it is unstoppable. I have been done wrong, and someone is going to have to pay!
  In truth, guess who ends up paying? Not the person who screwed up originally, nor those who assisted, the assistants, well, they tend to get handed their own coats of many colours, while yours truly freezes.
  For me to forgive, takes an awful lot. I have to get to the root of how things arrived at the place that the sh*t hits the fan. I have to look at each and every piece of the puzzle, and like I said..clean the crap off it, and figure out what made the piece break off. I have to put myself in the place of those who caused the pain, and try and figure out what enticed them to decide to hurt me. What made it worthwhile to set me aside,and dig the knife deep.
  Funny thing..usually after unending hours of detective work, I come to the conclusion it is never one single person who causes me to build up the fortress of hate and disbelief. It is more often a series of little flying insects that land on the main individual, and drop off pieces of feces.
  See, keeping quiet when things are brewing, as I stated with SFTU, is a mistake. Not defending, not questioning, well, those nasty insects never stay quiet, they buzz, and land, and the little pieces of feces they drop each time, grow larger and larger, and then...crack!! The pieces start to break off, all covered in sh*t, so they are impossible to see.
  To forgive, I have to come to the place where I understand..I understand that silence and non-communication while shit was being deposited, was how this happened. I realize not everyone recognizes sh*t, not everyone is like me, and has to check inside and all around the box, sniffing. Sometimes I mistake the smell, and I have to eat a little sh*t, but most of the time, I catch it quickly. Others don't always smell it over the perfume of sweet smelling poison, and when I finally see, they really didn't sniff hard enough..I can begin to forgive. It wasn't all their fault, they were coated in perfumed sh*t dropped on them by those who  continually buzzed about, while I remained quiet and unsuspecting.
  Thankfully, I can say, I have smashed down one of the most enormous collections of walls built a very long time ago. There is still a ton of debris, and getting that cleared up will take a long time, in fact with all the environmental restrictions, the stuff may very well remain. But the empty space now has a sprinkling of colour, instead of total black, and for that, I am grateful!