Forgiveness: The Cure for Bitterness

So I am finally catching up on previously written blog posts.  The poem I posted was written last winter.  This one has been sitting here for ages.  I went through a phase of finding forgiveness, rebuilding hope, kicking down old walls, and now I am revisiting and posting.

Forgiveness: The Cure for Bitterness

John F. Kennedy once said "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."  Josh Billings once said "There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness."  While Norman Cousins said "Life is an adventure of forgiveness."

I forgive you Mom for leaving me to deal with a difficult man.  I'm not sure how you did it for fifty plus years.  I highly recommend you for sainthood just for putting up with him.  I love you.

I forgive you Dad for being difficult at times, making it harder than it needed to be.  I can't imagine what effect Grandma Marshall's almost leaving you as a child felt like.  I know what it was like to have a mother leave you behind.  Looking back over our time together, I realize that you only wanted to be a part of my life the best way you could.  I know I was like my Mom, being around me was always like walking on egg shells, but that was my way of protecting myself.  You weren't a bad or evil man, just a pain in the butt sometimes.  I am your son and you are my father.  I love you.

I forgive my previous place of employment.  I wanted to do something more and you wanted to do something different.  And in the end, it doesn't matter.  We all move on.  I look back and realize what a hell of an adventure it was.  I was the one that brought it to a close.  But you also threw in a few road blocks.  I hope we can split the difference.  Thanks for the memories.

I forgive you, my brother.  It's not easy, but I understand you.  You may not care, and in all honesty I'm not sure I do either.  But we move on and live the lives we were given by our parents.

I forgive those the one that made my transition from one point in life to another extremely difficult.  I also praise and love the ones that helped me through it.  The numbers were far greater for the latter.  In hindsight, I doesn't matter.  You remind me too much of my Dad.  He outweighs you in the grand scheme of life.  He is far more important to me.  So you only get a half-assed forgiveness.

I forgive that ones that saw me as only a physical object to conquered, used, and tossed.  I will forgive you but I will never give up my romantic view on life.  So, I give you my forgiveness.  I don't really care whether you accept it or not; it's for me that I forgive.  You were just being yourselves and I allowed myself to get wrapped up.  And an special thanks to that last one.  Without you, I wouldn't be writing this, realizing that I had let bitterness in and now like a weed I will pull it out by its roots.  Once again, not really caring if you care, but I'm doing this for me.

Which brings me to the last person... I forgive myself, but I will never change.  I am a romantic.

Winston Churchill said "When it comes to living romantically, one shouldn't follow a road map either.  It's something you should discover through contemplation and intuition."

Meanwhile Shannon Ables wrote that "A romantic builds everyday fulfillment through tenacious observation of daily life and an abundance of reliance on intuition.  The result: An extraordinary life lived in ordinary days."

And one last, many thanks to Piglet for this one... "The things that make me different are the things that make me."

CSM