Time heals…nothing. By itself.

     I am having occasion to check in (yet again) on a process of forgiveness that seems to be taking forever.  The hurt involves betrayal, manipulation, depletion and humiliation.  The forgiveness is two-fold, as it tends to be.  I have to forgive him, and I have to forgive me for allowing him.  And I am seeing that time alone heals nothing.  In time, the universe tends to give you opportunities to heal through experience, but if you are failing to see the opportunity, you may have to create one.   

      In the process of forgiving, I let time go by, waiting for myself to simply let it go.  I felt that if I were the kind of person I wanted to be, I would just let it go and move forward.  Then I woke up 3 years later and realized that I was, simply, NOT letting it go, despite my best intentions.  And worse, that I had come to define myself by the experience, so it was contaminating my new and potentially joyful experiences with distrust.  I needed an experience that would help me redefine myself.  So I invited the past back in, so that I could at least write a slightly different “last” chapter.  So I could finally take some action.  And there was definitely some healing.

     But now there is a new occasion to examine how far I have come regarding this long-ago hurt.  The past is making an appearance in the present.  And I see that it no longer has any power over my new experiences, that is, my experiences that have no ties to the old ones.  But having been given the possibility of experiences that bridge the two, I see that I still feel the sting of humiliation and anger.  And I see the opportunity the universe is giving me.  There is a reason the past is working it’s way into my present.  There is more to my process of forgiveness and letting go, and healing is to be found in the new choices I can make, in the person I can now choose to be.  I’m nervous about it, but ready to see how far forward I can move.

     It’s interesting, though – now that I have come to see this Personal Evolution aspect of the marriage relationship, I am seeing all of my relationships in this light. 

     Maybe it’s because I’ve never been good at casual friendships.  I’ve never been the popular type – capable of chatting without intruding on people’s personal experiences, joking casually and cleverly, good for a good time.  Not that I’m a total bore.  I’m very capable of laughing and having a good time, and I’m a terrific audience for the clever.  I like to play, do, and try.  But my sense of humor has always come out most strongly in the process of exploring the depths – I am very good at finding the funny in what is deeply personal and deeply TRUE.  So my friendships have always had an element of this kind of exploration, of grasping for understanding, of trying to learn from it all. 

     So that’s ok.  I struggled with that for a long time in junior high and high school when that was a source of some real self-esteem issues, but as an adult, I have learned to embrace it and focus on the richness those relationships provide me.  And as an adult I am seeing that if my friendships are going to be about this, then they can be about so much more than a friend who is loyal and understanding, and who seems to like me.  I can choose my friends for what they inspire me to reach for.  I can choose them for my own Personal Evolution.

      And then I can look at my other relationships – the one’s I haven’t chosen, the one’s I am stuck with - and I can see them the same way.  These relationships, too, provide me with opportunities to be better than I am currently being.  Every interaction is a scene in which I have a part to play, and I chose who I will be in it – will I be a good listener, will I be compassionate, will I be self-respecting, will I be honest, will I be curious… will I handle this the way I’d like to handle this?  And hopefully, in this way, I will become more and more joyful in my life, as the gap between who I am being and who I’d like to be closes, as I become my best version of myself.