11: Forgive? Forget It!

CHAPTER 11

FORGIVE?
FORGET IT!

For years, I misled myself by buying into the fatal myth that I had to Forgive & Forget. Well, Tradition has kept that one alive like medical science keeps brain dead bodies functioning so as to plump their $$$ coffers.

MEANING:

Where's the growth? What's the benefit? Who does it serve except for the ones pushing the concept?

Doctors and hospitals often thwart families wanting to pull the plug on a brain-dead loved one. Then they make those families pay the ongoing astronomical bills. It makes no sense except to their accountants.

So too, with the Forgive & Forget Maxim, it's usually pushed by the perpetrators of the harmful acts which they would like others to forget.

My thoughts emerged when I realized who was promoting the Forgive & Forget idea, and, when I saw who was benefiting from it … I re-examines the phrase.

When I took it past the F & F phrase and translated it into words, it took on a whole new definition of self-deception. I saw it as an extension of the Let's Pretend Games.

EXAMPLES:
(Translations for The Abused)

Let's Pretend your cruelty never hurt. Let's Pretend you didn't mean it. Or that I asked for it. Or I deserved it.

Let's Pretend all the unexpressed feelings and pains (as I have no where to expose and dump them) that still churn my insides really don't exist. That they still don't hurt.

EXAMPLES:
(Translations for The Abusers)

Let's Pretend you and your feelings still don't matter. That if you resist making waves, even though it may be the only way to clean the cesspool of your kidhood memories, that maybe one day mommy, or daddy, or whoever may serve you that ever‑dangling Love Carrot you always hungered for, but never got and maybe never will.

Let's Pretend the Denial Band‑aid will cover your open wound so effectively that it will seem to have disappeared. Then I'll never be forced to take responsibility for my wrongful actions toward you, as either an active Abuser or Condoning Mate.

Let's Pretend it never happened so we can all get on with whatever the heck our non‑relationship has always been. So we'll never have to perform in-depth exploratories on the harm I've caused you.

Let's Pretend there's no such thing as responsibility. Only, Peace at All Costs. Costs like your mental and emotional health. But what's that worth when compared to maintaining the family's status woe? And, maintaining my illusion of being a perfect praiseworthy parent … or mate?

For me, F & F is drenched with denial. As in:

I'll Pretend that my Life With Mama never happened and I imagined it all. That it was only a nightmare. And you, Ashley, were actually the sweet, supportive, caring mom I longed for. I'll rewrite history into herstory. OK?

Let's Pretend we were friends. That I could talk to you about anything without fear of your frightening reactions.

Let's Pretend those welts from your beatings were just leftover makeup from some acting gig I had.

Let's Pretend you luved and wanted me to be alive.

If Forgive & Forget does not equal Let's Pretend,
what does it equal? Perhaps, something like:

I forgive you for your choosing to hurt me. It's OK that you tried to destroy my life, my belief in me. It's all OK. It was just your prerogative as a parent. So, now let's just get on with our superficial relationship. In fact, you can even keep trying to ruin whatever self-esteem I may still have left. After all, you're the parent and I'm the kid, and adults rule. And since I, my life, and my feelings never mattered to you before, why should they begin to matter to me after all these years?

Suggestion:

You try it. Take any setup where you've been told to Forgive & Forget. But, rather than just say I forgive, personalize it.

Extend it into what Forgive really means to you.
Put it down on paper so you can detach from it.
See it without pose colored glasses.
Be neither victor nor victim.
Review your thoughts from a best friend's viewpoint.
Examine what you've expressed so as to discover:
Who benefits most from an F & F Charade?
Who shall continue to hurt?
Then ask yourself WHY others may be hurt by you telling the truth? Then ask:

IF THE TRUTH HURTS,
WHAT'S THE EFFECT OF LIES?

Personally, I rewrote Forgive & Forget into:

LOOK. LEARN. AND LET GO.

Let Go of anger, revenge, fear and kickbacks.

When we resist looking clearly into what we experienced, when we refuse to tap it for Truth for our need to grow, if we fear letting go of the past, we condemn our future selves. We saddle our sanity with nightmare reruns. We force our present time to pay for past regrets and hurts.

The method I've found to free myself from the lingering nightmares is to remove the heavy responsibility coat woven from what I tolerated as a kid. When I do, I realize the need to place it on the shoulders of the one who rightfully earned it, even in their absentia.

Though I could not find or face the person who caused the original abuse in my life, I realized I could still examine my side of the story. I didn't need the other's permission to search out the Truth.

Nor, and this was a biggie for me to figure out, did I need her to say "I'm sorry," or admit she was not a nice happy mommy camper. My responsibility ceased at the border crossing between she and I. Again, One Life to a Customer ― per Journey.

To have thought she must be there to harvest my gripes, to believe she was the only one able to free me of my nightmares, meant I was still giving her control of my life and happiness.

Freedom was mine when I became the Banker of my own Heart Fund. When I stopped playing Let's Pretend and began living Believe It Or Not, knowing that what I endured did indeed happen.

Now, what am I going to do about it?

Keep assuming needless responsibility for her decisions? Her choice of mother-mode?

Keep dragging her tales behind me like a guilty dog?

Keep making her pay for how she hurt me by screwing up my celebration of life? My ability to succeed? My joy?

Keep letting her echoes haunt my reality?

OR! Heal myself with a healthy dose of Truth?

It was not a tough choice. Clarity is a terrific cure for the Let's Pretend Poison. It helps us give credit where credit's due by not taking blind responsibility for our kidhood directors not being as supportive and luving as we wanted them to be.

Clarity helps us see familyhood as a joint venture in which Tradition forced the abused ones to live as silent partners.

Clarity forces us to see that the anger, cruelty and disregard we experienced may not have had anything directly to do with us, other than us having been setup as a predestined audience for our own growth course.

When I look back, devoid of the F & F smoke screen, I know I did my best with the circumstances I birthed into. I know there wasn't a damn thing I could've done to change Ashley. She was fully committed to cultivating her own Woes Garden.

With that clarity, I was free to acknowledge that I had survived my trek through the briar patch; as well as for having made my choice not to replant it in my current life.

I also realize there is no way to Forget. Heck! The infinite capacity of our brains' computers does not know the term DELETE. Only RE-SAVE into other directories.

Therefore, I needed to refile the memory from my Pain Directory into my Gain Directory by extracting all the knowledge I garnered from my kidhood seminar of HOW-NOT-TO-LIVE.

Then trashing the physical strain it took to acquire it.

Look, Learn & Let Go DOES work.

Try it. Write down everything from your past that still pushes your panic buttons, that still causes inner-pain. Or, talk it out to a mirror or a good listening friend.

However you chose, I assure you, you will never be free of any abusive memory and it's lingering phantoms if you continue holding on; if you continue making yourself Bad so as to make others Good; if you continue to justify outside wrongs; if you continue to fuel your scar search with pity, vengeance or denial.

All we do by holding on is add to past abuse by abusing ourselves with regret. So too, we self-abuse when we mourn over what could've been had others and ourselves acted differently way back when.

If we don't Look, Learn & Let Go of our suppressed rage that grows when we struggle to Forgive & Forget, that rage has no other vent except inward.

Denial becomes a distorted rear view mirror wherein objectionables appear larger than they need to presently be.

Agreed. Letting Go ain't no snap. Which probably ex-plains why Growing Pains aren't called Growing Pleasures. Yet, when we expand the limited scope of personally biased retro-vision, the real picture becomes easier to explore.

It gets easier to learn what there is to learn from the worst of setups so as to go forth and multiply our own worth and capacity for happiness based not on how others rated us on their score cards, but rather on what we want our current market to bare.

Sure, Letting Go has a trade-off price. For some it means canceling cop-outs of moaning over their lousy lot in life, of blaming others for how much they don't earn, for how thwarted or unloved they may feel.

Many have to Let Go of their innermost scripts and speeches they've used to put themselves down, or to block their right to success, love and happiness.

Letting Go prevents us from making others responsible for what our life contains, or lacks.

But! Letting Go is a great launching pad for creating de-sired changes in the quality of our work, lives, loves and self.

Letting Go frees us to dump the tired misconceptions of how life HAS TO BE. Misconceptions that may have been force fed to us. A toxic diet we now have the right to scrap.

Locking ourselves into Tunnel Vision focused solely on the past is like declaring:

"Hey, whadya mean there's a forest around here? All I can see is these damn trees blocking my path. I've been sitting here in this dismal dump for so long, how do you expect me to even imagine there's more to life?"

Yet, when we soar past the blinding barricades of our fear's limited view, soar up to a vantage point where we can see there is a forest we failed to recognize, we're better able to focus the Search Light on Truth.

It's so easy to get sucked into the ground cover of WHY those people in our life may have acted as they did, that we could go daffy seeking sanity where there's none. Or answers for questions we may never be privy to.

Or living so intently in the past that we deny our current life. Deny that we each have very individual reasons for mattering, for having manifested in this life. And thus, we may buy the immaculate misconception that we are a mistake, just as others may have wanted us to buy … as my mom wanted me to believe that I was worthless. Well, poppycock!

By remaining stuck in other people's scenarios, be it kids, parents, mates, or whoever, by remaining rooted in their chosen assumptions, we deny our ability to behold the clearing; we stymie our ability to live our spiritual purpose for having been born.

Nature constantly shows us there is a reason for all. There are no mistakes made by God and Nature.

People make mistakes. And, I figure, it's part of the Plan. It's allowed to happen. It's our Free Will of Attitude that eventually ends up calculating our journey when we are handed the karmic check for our separate passages.

Still, that doesn't mean we have to put the mistakes or misconceptions of others on our tab by being less than our own true potential. Or continue to resign leases on mistakes we once made.

The biggest mistake is to deny we are COGs in the wheel ― Children Of God; to deny we're born with value in life's scheme, in the Master Puzzle; to reject our potential via giving undue import to other's hang-ups, fears, frustrations and evaluations. Or to allow pity to poison our clarity.

The journey to genuinely understanding ourselves, towards loving ourselves as-is and encouraging ourselves to be the best we can be, is the most important trip we can ever take.

CATCH IS: We are the only ones who can book that journey and board the plane.