Grey-ish

Forgiveness is vital to healing, growth and expanding creativity.  I know this.  I have worked for years on forgiving people, institutions, and animals in my life.  I have attended workshops, written and talked about it, prayed about it, and addressed forgiveness in therapy.  I know what a huge difference it has made in my life to let go, let go, let go.

The most challenging part of the process was to forgive myself for my all my mistaken judgments and their resulting actions.  It has been worth it.  I have seen the changes in how I respond to the world.  I more easily forgive others, I understand other points of view, I don't take every action personally. 

Yet, I find myself in a situation right now where old actions and choices that I thought long surrendered, have been biting me in the butt.  I have been believing with all my heart that I had done the work on forgiving myself and then bang!

I have a friend that is in the midst of a health and emotional crisis that is an emotional mirror for the illness and final days of my Mother's life.  I made choices at the time that were the best I could manage and had many regrets when she died so quickly.   Rationally,  I know that I did the best I could and that I went by the light I could see by at the time.  Emotionally, I still feel I was selfish and was thinking of myself instead of my mother. 

And now I realize my sleepless nights, my illness, my feeling overwhelmed and unable to deal with my life are all echoes to how I felt during the summer of 2009.  I have not really forgiven myself.  On some level I believe what I did is unforgiveable and so here I am doing it "in effect" as closely as I can again. 

Somehow, I still think there is something else I should have done, could have done, something more, different choices.  I believe that there is something missing in me that other people have to hand.  

It is one thing to forgive yourself for an error, a mistake, a choice.  But to forgive myself for what I see as a fatal flaw is impossible.  The work has to be done on accepting myself as I am.  Accepting all my actions and my past.   I know that I cannot move forward out of this morass until I do.  Everyone is not the same and we don't all have the same skill set in dealing with other people, with illness, and with fear.

There is no fatal flaw.  I am a whole person with qualities and quirks.  I can be very generous and very selfish.  I am not black or white, I am grey.  I love the image of a grey blob.  Grey matter, grey skies, grey emotions.  Mixed up, mixed in, a good mix of all that makes me a human.  I am acceptable.  I am enough.  I am Melissa.