I am in pain and I don’t know how to process it. I feel like I am waking up from a dream and I don’t even know whether the dream is good or bad in the grand scheme, just that I am deeply learning from it. Most of my dreams are neither good nor bad, and they are just weird, and I guess this dream of life is no exception. I am in the midst of heartbreak, grief, emotional turmoil, and just daily shitty feelings. It is also a time of breakthrough, creativity, love, joy, and celebration. A time of coming into my higher self and higher purpose, and thank goodness because otherwise I might not be making it.
It’s easy for me to look at stuff that “has happened to me” or my childhood and dismiss it, “oh, that was childhood” . Now I know that it is my trauma to handle and my shit to deal with and I usually try not to allow myself to go around hurting other people forever and blaming it on my childhood trauma or getting myself in shitty situations and never learning my worth. I have looked at shitty relationships and thought yes they messed up or whatever and then forgive them because they are human and also take responsibility for showing them how to treat me. I have owned up to that and honestly, I tried my goddamn best in those relationships, I did. I am most certainly in an era of choosing myself, of showing up for myself, of not leaking my energy all over the place – TRYING to learn this at least but it’s very new to me.
Here is the hardest part though. The part that my big ole ego and I weren’t expecting. I don’t say this lightly or cute because it is ugly, and embarrassing, and shameful. I also have to own up to my own mistakes or those things that were not “mistakes” but decisions that hurt other people. I am talking about decisions where I had a choice. I had the gut instinct (the actual intuition) to not do what I did but I gave in to thoughts that I knew I shouldn’t and said things that are not okay. I absolutely said things to people I shouldn’t have, even worse masked those things under the name of love, because that’s what felt true, and completely ignored my own morals and values. The saying hurt people hurt people may be true, but it isn’t right. It is our own responsibility to do better when we know better, immediately, and live up to those mistakes. We can not go back in time and change things. Sometimes we don’t even have a way to apologize to a person in a way they will see/read/hear/receive it. Sometimes all we can do is own the mistake, feel the overwhelming sense of guilt, and do our best to never do anything similar again. Of course we are not perfect, and we will always make mistakes and poor choices.
However, I believe that if we learn to be present in the moment and really feel into moments like this, they can be life changing. Not only for ourselves, but everyone in our path. I am in one of these moments right now. Feeling extreme guilt and knowing there is NO excuse. All I can do is take responsibility and apologize and do better. After that comes my least favorite, the fact that there is NOTHING else I can do about it except for not do it again. I could say “well I was going through this” or “well so and so was doing that or he was doing this and she was doing that” or “at least I didn’t do THIS” but the fact is that there is nothing to do but sit in the guilt and the shame, and to acknowledge the truth of the situation.
Of course I am not saying to take blame for something you didn’t do, or something that was not your fault. That is a whole different side of shame and guilt and trauma that I am deeply acquainted with. That is an equally valid side of healing. However that is for another piece because right now, I am the person who inflicted the pain. I know no one is responsible for anyone else’s feelings (or actions) but as a human on earth, especially one who is striving to be conscious and “know better”, I am clearly stating right here and right now that I did wrong. I am deeply, deeply sorry. I have learned from it, which doesn’t change or help anything, and I have been on the other side of a eerily similar situation and know the pain that my actions caused. That makes it hurt even more because I very much should have known better.
I know writing this piece, or knowing these things, doesn’t change facts or the past, but here are some things I have learned.
- Just because you have made poor decisions once doesn’t mean you should do it again.
- Learn to recognize the difference between intuitive hits and urges.
- Do the work on your own healing so you don’t hurt others. Then do the work again, and again, and again. Healing is a process that I don’t think really ever ends. Once you think you are healed, the universe will send you mirrors to see where you still have work to do.
- Just like any other emotion, guilt and shame are valid feelings that need to be felt. Just like any other emotion, don’t let them rule every aspect of your life, but really feel them and know they are here to teach us. Don’t avoid them or deflect or hide, just feel them, and listen to what they are trying to teach you.
- Once you know better, do better. If you know better and still do the thing, there are going to be consequences for yourself and others. If there aren’t consequences for you yet that you are aware of, you either are not empathizing or not taking responsibility in the way you should.
To the people I have hurt in the past, I am so, so sorry. I am truly trying my best to do better and to live a life of love, and not in the cheesy way (although I can appreciate things deemed *cheesy* too lol), but in the hard, gritty way that recognizes my own wrongdoings as well. To the people I have hurt recently, please know that I am so, so sorry. I have wept for you, and there is nothing I can do to fix or change it now, but if I could I absolutely would. I have gone through very similar and know how much it hurts, so I know firsthand how shitty that was. I know this doesn’t make things better. I want to say “that’s not who I am at all!” because I truly do strive to make the right decisions every day. I try so hard, yet even if my intentions were in a better place, the results were the same. I often consider speaking the truth is the kindest thing, and it is, I believe, but only when said at appropriate times. Who we are at our core spirit is who we are, but our lives are made up of our own decisions, both good and bad, and now this is a part of that life, the one I am creating. I carry guilt with me over things that happened long ago, and have a lengthy list of things I have said or done that I revisit in my mind quite often. Perhaps that is unhealthy and things I should let go of, and most of them I have *mostly* let go of, but recent decisions (both good and bad) are things I now I have to sit with for awhile, years perhaps.
At the end of the day we are ALL human and honestly, every time I do something I deem “shitty” even if no one sees it that way but me, it makes me more empathetic towards everyone who has hurt me in the past, though there are no excuses. We are all one. No one is exempt from deserving the feelings of happiness, pride, and peace, or of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and remorse.
In moments like these, of course don’t go ballistic and literally hurt yourself or give up, thinking you are not worth living or thinking back to all the past things you have done wrong. While that response can also seem like the more intense, appropriate response if you are unhealed, it also puts the attention back on you and your experience. If you are saying to yourself “I am so stupid. I am evil. I hate myself. etc.” then you are still being self-centered. This response also helps no one and makes the situation worse. The only response potentially worse than that one is “Well I already made the decision once so I might as well do it again and again!”. Both of these responses only fuel pain and shame and cause more of it, snowballing and becoming even more harmful.
I am sharing this today because I know others who have felt or are feeling similar, and I want to encourage us all to really lean into these feelings and process them. Own up to your shit. Listen to your intuition because if you don’t you end up getting hurt and you end up hurting others. Sit with each person in the situation in your mind and empathize with how they might be feeling. If you have been on the other side of a similar situation before recognize this and if you haven’t already forgiven the people who hurt you, try to find forgiveness in your heart for them too. Also, recognize that the person you hurt has their own right to be angry, to be sad, to be in pain, but it is now up to them what to do with it. In many cases there is only so much you can do to make it right. I know I will make mistakes and poor decisions again, just hopefully not the same one twice. There is no way to avoid hurting others all together unless you went to go live somewhere all alone and even then you would most likely be triggering hurt somehow for others through your absence. The world needs you to be in as much of alignment with your highest self as possible but because we are human we will continue to make human errors. Remember that others will also hurt you again and just because you did something wrong it will not justify other’s poor actions toward you While you might have empathy for them, it is not helpful to anyone to start this cycle of allowing toxic situations to continue to harm you, either.
Hopefully this resonates with someone. By the time anyone reads this, this “event” I am speaking of is in the past, but I am writing it because while I do hope to eventually forgive myself, I do not want to forget. While it might be easier to forget, I do not think that completely forgetting would spur me to make better decisions in the future. I want to keep myself accountable and my hope for each of you reading this is to keep yourselves accountable too. I wish that in some way, the guiltier I felt or the more I lean into the shame I am feeling, the more I could fix it or make it right. I wish.
Thank you, universe and other humans in my life, for showing me the results of my actions so that I can feel all of these things. Thank you for the opportunity to do better, and for teaching me what I need to learn in this situation (actually there are several lessons surrounding this situation but that is all for another time). Thank you for forgiveness and for the human experience. I promise to do better each day, and to not forget the past but to process it and to spur further intentional and pure decisions. I truly wish to decrease suffering in the world, and I am deeply sorry for the moments I have done the opposite of that.
Lastly, if the person who I hurt ever reads this, your anger is valid, your pain is valid, your grief is valid. I see the absolute destruction in my words and acknowledge there is no excuse. I am deeply, deeply, sorry. I wish you love, peace, and joy, and if there is any way I can add to these things for your or facilitate your healing further, please reach out.
If you are here to see perfect then you may want to head out now because I am not it. This isn’t even the cutesy “We all make mistakes hehe!” but the raw, vulnerable sharing that only comes from trying to truly be honest with yourself first, and then the world. I truly want to be honest in what I share, even if I don’t always share until I am ready. I wish you forgiveness and love for yourself, and for the world.