I have reopened my conversation with Jaie recently. She and I are working out our differences via email in a very open and honest setting for us. I am learning a lot about her perspective and about my own. She reminded me today of an event which I had totally wiped from my memory. Within that event is the key to a painful memory I have been carrying around for years. All this time I had convinced myself that I had been wronged, that something had happened to me for which I continued to feel pain, mostly because of a lack of communication on the part of the other person. Today, when she reminded me of this other event, I realized that this person HAD apologized to me. The he HAD made amends and I had forgiven him. But for some reason, I chose to completely forget that this day ever happened. I had convinced myself that he and I had never spoken of the situation again.
Now I know myself and I know how I am. Why would I ever think that I would let something that big go? I confront when something hurts me that badly. But I believed that I had let it go. I believed that we hadn’t ever spoken substantially again. I let myself forget his apology so that I could continue to believe that the stuff he did was justified in some way. That has to be it. I can’t think of any other reason I wouldn’t remind myself of the apology. I had to believe, deep down, that he was right when he hurt me.
This is very disturbing. Obviously I have a lot of work to do on this subject. I’ve been doing some of the work already, but damn! It’s amazing how much I can lie to myself about stuff. It really makes me question all of my memories now. How much of it is truth and how much is made up or left out to make it appear to be what I think it should be? I’ve always said that you can rewrite the past to be whatever you want to support the you that you are choosing to be. And it seems I have practiced this unconsciously. But for how long? Shit. I’ve really got to figure out what to do about this.
* This is part of an ongoing series of posts detailing what happened on a spiritual pilgrimage that I took in 2002. To start from the beginning, go to July 2, 2013. To see the entire spiritual journey as it gets published, click on the category “You Want Me To Do WHAT?!!?” to see all of the posts.
