Aug 19th, 2013 Home, sweet home. There’s something about the rain that takes me back to some of the best times of my life. My childhood. Until a short while ago I could only remember all the horrible things that occurred in my life. Strict parents, missing parents, friends and family dying, I ruminated on every bad thing that had ever happened to me for as long as I can remember! That’s twenty some years of being miserable. What a waste. To me my childhood was horrible and I really avoided thinking about it. I blocked out a lot of bad memories, but as a result I blocked so many of my fond memories as well. I’m not sure what it was that changed my train of thought. I don’t feel it was one single defining moment, to be honest, but rather a long chain of events over the last 15 years that led up to one of the most important lessons of my life. Forgiveness. We say it. But do we mean it? Do we understand what it means to forgive someone? Furthermore, what is the purpose of forgiveness? Growing up, my step-dad and I didn’t have a very healthy relationship. He yelled, I lied, he got angry, and I got scared. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of it, just the end result. We spent years hurting each other, until there was nothing left of our relationship. I was pissed that my “real-dad” wasn’t around, and he didn’t know how to handle that. It’s not his fault, it’s not mine, but the emotion had to go somewhere and until I moved out, we just threw it back and forth inflicting more and more pain. Physics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It simply transfers from one form to another, or from one object to another. Emotions are like that, we can let an emotion like anger or sadness consume us so all we do is pass it on, or we can choose to stand and examine why were feeling a certain way, actually deal with it and change its form. I couldn’t stand to be sad before, I ignored it, I hid it, everyone thought I was just this happy go-lucky guy that let nothing get to him.(or perhaps I just thought I had everyone fooled) I used to walk around with the entire worlds problems on my chest as well as my own and most people wouldn’t have had a clue. How I did it for so long, I have no idea. It was sweltering and suffocating and on more than one occasion it came close to killing me. As I said before, I didn’t change overnight. It was slow and gradual, I spent a lot of time growing in many other ways, and learning many of life’s lessons, but all those other things didn’t mean a lot without learning how to forgive. Now I actually look forward to being sad, as crazy as that may sound, its true. I walked a very long, dark road, holding on to all my hurt and problems like a warm blanket. I guess what I’m trying to say is I know what it’s like to walk the other path, and it gives me the ability to really appreciate how good it feels to be able to let go. Which brings us back to forgiveness. I always interpreted forgiving someone as a sort of release from their wrongdoings. But I’ve found it’s so much more than that. It’s about healing and moving on, and being happy with ourselves. We are not perfect, we make mistakes, and it takes a lot of understanding and forgiveness for us to be able to allow each other to grow and learn from those mistakes and become better people and not have to carry around our pain and hurt and pass it on to our children for generations to come. It’s about breaking cycles and stopping the unproductive patterns we choose to carry on with, letting go of the hurt, and ultimately forgiving ourselves. Anyhow. I arrived at work this morning and it was raining, hard and heavy. I got out of my truck, in front of our office at work, and walked around outside for awhile. Walking in the rain made me remember our family’s cabin down the ocean. My cousin Ryan and I were very young, seven and eight years old maybe. It was early in the morning and it was raining very hard. I remember the sound of the rain beating off the aluminum roof of our “A” frame cabin like I remember the sound of my own voice. I remember falling asleep to it, and waking up, playing cards, building motels and Inns out of kindling, and collecting rock crabs all to that sound. It’s music to my ears. Anyways, once again I digress. We asked if we could go fishing up the falls by ourselves and our grandparents said no problem, as I’m sure they would’ve been liking to enjoy their morning coffee in peace. Ryan and I grabbed our rods and tackle boxes and headed out of the cabin and through the long, tall, dead grass that lay between us and the trail up to the falls. It was so ethereal outside with all the mist from the hard beating rain, it appeared as if it was raining up rather than down. I remember the feeling of my jeans being pasted to my legs, before we even got to the trail, as we were absolutely drenched already. We picked berries off of a wild mountain ash tree, baited them onto our hooks, and plopped them into one of the many pools that could be found on the way up the falls. It was a beautiful morning, and I’m glad it was raining this morning to jog my foggy brain. Those are truly some of my favorite memories. It is now 9:44 in the Kiteen Valley, and myself and my Jordon are the only two souls out here to enjoy it. The rain is still falling hard, and I’m still smiling about the cabin. Good night
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:39:43 +0000
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