All this is really starting to get at me now... I have been trying to not dwell on it... trying not think about it all the time. Trying to move forward into forgiveness, a forgiving state of mind or something. But hell, I keep ending back up here... in pain. It's a bit tricky all this forgiveness shit! Please, let me explain.

I have in my time with this been very vocal have stood up and really let it rip and told them all what I think about it. A lot of people are in pain along with me. But there comes a time when you go enough of this. I am sick of banging my head up against a brick wall, repeating myself and having no one really listen. It hurts to be thinking about this all the time and I do have a forgiving heart. I don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking about all the bad things that happened. After all, it wasn't all bad... there was laughter fun and other pleasant times in our family.

I need to pull back a bit and lick my wounds... I want to heal damn it! I want others to be able to as well (though I have little advice for anyone else at this stage!) I thought to myself, "Andrew you need to move on... you need not to be thinking about this all the time. You're never going to really understand it and it's not making it that much easier to understand the things you have managed to thus far. So, let's just take a step back, stop thinking about this all the time. Stop playing in my memories, stop talking to my family members about it, stop dreaming about it, stop crying about it, just stop it!".
Please God, I just want it all to stop.

My family is hurting and I don't want to be this constant source of pain for them... constantly poking at all this you know? I want to be able to find forgiveness and let go of all this anger. My God, I want to be able to forgive myself. I want to be able to move on... please! let me out of here. (sigh) Well that would be great if it was all as easy as that... yeah ok, let's just leave it there and move away now! I have been trying to move on... God have I been trying. All this is haunting me!

Shit, as hard as I try to focus on something else... get on with my life... you know, pick myself up and move on, I seem to end up back here! Back here thinking about it. So much of me is my parents... I am so like my mum it frightens me and I have my dad's rage! God, he had some temper let me tell you. Sometimes I use to be able to get him to just completely lose it.

What I am trying to express here is that so much of my daily life... how I think about things, how I feel about things, how I do things, how I react to things is affected and made up of all that has gone before. Things that happen during your day... you might get angry or upset about something. Let me give you an example... I lost it with my boyfriend when I had just returned from some time away. I mean I completely lost it... yelled and screamed and hit him and everything. It was about something little really, something I had done many times before - not paid the rent and got wasted on it instead.

Well hell, I went off at him like this psychotic bitch and really hit the roof! Saying, "No, that's it! I am not going to take this. I am not going to do this anymore with you. I am going to pack my bags and leave... I am sick of this. What good is it if, when I need to take some time out to pull myself together, you use it as your time to get plot lost? Just because I am not here with you, or is this pay back???" God, I was making such a scene. I was so full of rage. I felt so let down and I was stressing about the bills, etc. I was just getting back to thinking I had things together again (well better than when I had left anyway).

"So, there I am going now. I am leaving. Shit, I am not going to do this with you anymore. It's too F***en bad!" I grabbed some things and was marching out the door... my boyfriend chased me half way down the street begging me to come back and not leave. All the way I was going "No, f*** off! I have had a gut full. I am so sick of this. I am leaving I tell you." "Please, just tell me this one thing... please tell me you love me," he cried. I just looked at him and scoffed!
"Love you? - How ridiculous you have to ask," I thought, "Can't you tell?"
Oh my god - like I was really expressing it - I think not!

But anyway, I really needed to cool down. So, off I went to my friend's house to have a drink and talk.... Chill out. Well, I had my bourbon and coke (very nice) and talked about relationships with my friend, calmed myself down and tried to relax a little. Then I thought I had better ring and check my boyfriend was ok as I realized I had over reacted. I called and told him I was calmer and was on my way home.

On the way back I started to get wild again so I sat down for a while with my head between my legs rocking back and forth thinking, "Why am I so angry? Why is this upsetting me so much? This is nuts to be this mad about it - it wasn't unfixable. God why - why so angry?" I was sitting there rocking back and forth back and forth... then things.... Thoughts - feelings began to come - back and forth I rocked thinking, "What is this?"

Well, the first thought / feeling was "hurt him before he hurts you... Go on, get in there and hurt him before he hurts you some more!" This made me start to cry as I thought what a terrible thing that was to be thinking. Then, the next thing I knew I was full on having this recall. I was this little boy and I could here my mum nutting off at me screaming abuse at me she was... going to town! "That's it," she cried, "I have had enough of this from you. I am going to call Social Welfare and they can come and take you away. Then you'll no what hard done by is, my boy. Then you'll no what it to have it hard. My God, then you'll be sorry! You'll go and I will have no control over what home they will put you in and God knows what you will have to deal with then! You think you have it so hard, my god, this will teach you... one way or another, my boy YOU WILL LEARN!"

I was crying my eyes out again like a little boy sitting there head between my legs, rocking back and forth like I used to do... back and forth, back and forth. She packed my sister Laurel's bags and sat them by the front door one day. Screaming at her, telling her, too, that social welfare was going to come and take her... For hours mum would keep going, "Oh, is that them coming up the drive? I think it is.... No? Oh well, they wont be far away now I have called them and there coming for you it's too late now. Teach you to answer me back I will teach you to do as you please... teach you - you naughty, naughty, naughty girl!"

Well, so yes, there I am acting out an all too similar scene with my boyfriend and that's what came to me sitting their wondering why I was so mad. I felt just terrible I know how bad it hurts to have that done to you as I had had it done to me many times. Yet, there I was doing the exact same thing to the person I love, as I then realized I had done many times... every time something went wrong I had been doing this with him. Ah, yet another nasty trouble ridden pattern to add to the list I was staring in the face.

This shocked me and I felt just terrible about it. It took me a few days, but I got around to telling my boyfriend what had really happened for me then. I offered my experience of that to him as not an excuse for my behavior, but rather some insight into it. I told him all about how I was feeling and what had come up for me sitting there that night and that I saw this pattern or trait in me. I told him that I hoped by recognizing this pattern and to be able to begin the task of releasing it...Ultimately, to not do it again.

It's a big job to do this and I know how hard it is going to be. But, with realization, comes some hope... some hope that I will be able to learn not to do these hurtful things to both the people I love and myself. These things that I seem to keep doing here on auto pilot. Look, I offer this up not as some dig, not as some "let's lay the blame for my behavior on my parents". But, as...
"This is what is happening to me now right now, even though it is from the past... This is what I am dealing with today".

This is why it is taking me so long to deal with... there is so much of it. How long is this supposed to take anyway? Has anyone timed it? Damn! All this while I am here desperately trying not to do this... keep focusing on it and me, wanting to be able to find forgiveness and not obsess over this for the rest of my life. Here I am expecting (hoping) to just put this behind me and think of something else... think of the good stuff, leave that shit behind for everyone's sake... Don't keep on about this Andrew. You know everyone wants you to just get over this and right bloody now!

But, I am greeted with things like this on a daily basis, which like it or not takes me back to the pain again and again. And there I am crying, feeling all that pain from my childhood and trying not be angry about it, because, remember, I am trying to be forgiving about this, not angry and not hurt and not highly pissed off!

This is what I mean when I say this is haunting me! As I stagger through this life trying to heal, trying to learn, trying to grow, trying to move on, trying to correct the many bent and twisted things I do in my life, trying to........
Trying to fly... free from all this pain.

It's so complicated and such a huge job. I wish these stages of growth didn't seem to cause everyone else as much pain as they do me. But it is very hard to do something like this quietly! Do you know what I mean? I don't know how to do this any easier... Shit, I would be doing it if I did, for Christ's sake!

Well, in realizing these things... in acknowledging this pattern and in understanding some more and even just in writing this now, I release this pattern and it's pain.
I am grateful for the lesson it has brought me, in particular, and with love in my heart I will set it free.

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