forgiveness

As I look to the past seeking understanding of my slow but dramatic transformation into who I am now, I feel the same fears, the same uncertainties. There are people, and the things people said, and I live in the present with the belief that they are long gone. Tonight reminds me that they are only a few clicks away, and they rush back swiftly, brightly. They read like a chapter out of someone else's book; a book about someone who does not live inside my body anymore. A stranger.

I want to feel resolution, I want to conclude, but I do not wish to revisit. I do not wish to open myself up again to those who I had to forget. I desire safety and comfort, for the right to be myself and be open and unguarded. But I realize now how unsettled it all still is. I wonder: is it enough to rectify these truths within myself or must I seek peace in the physical realm?

There are things, small things, that bruise my heart so easily, so often. I know now that there are things I need to learn to forgive. But forgiveness for me means facing my own complicity in the course of what has happened; it means I must learn to forgive myself.