I need you to forgive me says one part to another, the part of me that is plagued with what I’ve done wrong. The Luna Park episode when Jacobi hustled for an all-rides ticket then refused to go on any and I lost my shit, how he sat on his bed that night looking frightened and it hit me that he had only been being a child, that’s what children do, and I had slammed him for it, how that image haunts me. How I never realised Blake was neurodiverse until at twelve it dawned on us, how I wish I’d known the world that spun inside that head, how I imagine loneliness and feel the stab of it. How I shouted when a kitchen chair flipped backwards just as I’d put the supper on the table, how I said get out when one of them playing with a resistance band snapped it so hard it made me jump. How I fuck up again and again as a parent, friend, sibling, partner, host, mishandle this life, how this is human, and the part that beasts me for it. I sat before my altar and heard the other part of me say I need you to forgive me, because how can we go on with this internal beating, what is the point of it, where does it get us, what does it do, and where will it end? Accountability flips into neurotic self-hate, guilt, a shame indulged in, and do you hear it already creeping into that sentence? The stick is out and in the hand even as I write those words, even as I delve and look and bring it onto the table. An aggressive approach to the inherently flawed experience of being human, a zero-tolerance attitude, I don’t know where I learnt it, I am frightened, a lonely world spins, let’s look.
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A line I never understood or felt particularly connected to, but an epiphany stunned me. Oddly enough, I was at a Buddhist retreat:
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt. 25:37–40.)
“The least of these,” I realized, includes how we treat and speak to ourselves. It is not my nature, but I try to tread gently when I remember. ❤️
We are not ready for life, we will never be ready for life, but we must plunge in headfirst anyway - that's how it works. Every entry in the recovery diaries is like a koan. 💛