Unstuck

Give up expecting things from other people, or your life, that they do not choose to give you.

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness these days. And realizing that forgiving is a solitary and lonely activity. No one really sees you doing it. They only see what you're not doing.

But the activity of letting go of anger takes time and energy and more than a little bit of patience. It takes finding the crevice in myself where I tucked a memory, a feeling, that disappointment and the bloody damage still remaining and hauling it out into the light and looking at it and yelling "that was then and this is now" until my voice is raw.

That was then.

This new situation doesn't know about what happened in that other time in that other place. This new unhappiness reminds me of darkness and drowning and feeling trapped but it isn't the same. I don't have to go back there. I don't have to go back there. I don't have to go back there.

The challenge that remains is to sift through the grains of sand, find the ones marked with your face, and hand them to you. Then look down at the rocky path and walk away.