Once Again, It Isn't Always About Us

It's when things are most important to me that I wrestle the most with whether to write about them or not. In light of recent discussions on blogs about how we can take things very personally and read rejection or hurt into them where none is necessary, I feel it is a timely topic. It's so painful, though, that I've hesitated, and hesitated.

I've been in shock since I was told that the person I've known and trusted and loved the longest is dying. She is being heavily sedated to take away the pain, but cancer is still an awful, awful illness. It isn't fair. She's too young, she has young children, she has so much to live for. She wants to live a long life, she wants to watch her children grow up, but the disease isn't giving her that option.

Yet she is a very private person so I should not be surprised that she does not want visitors in her final moments. She wants to remove herself from the world of the living so that she can be at peace when she dies, instead of railing at the cruelty of it like I'm sure she must want to do and like I want to do. She wants to disengage from her emotional attachments, release herself like a balloon to float into the atmostphere. In my intellectual mind I can understand that, but that means going beyond the instinctive hurt I feel. I feel like she is finding me lacking somehow, like I can't provide her with any comfort in her time of need. I am hurt that I am not up to her standards and feel rejected.

But it isn't always about me. This is not about my being lacking in any area, at my not being worthy of comforting her. It is completely about her needs. She needs peace. If she needs to detach in order to find it, then that is simply what she needs. I need to love her enough to give her what she needs. It is her right and her due. There is no point in my feeling rejected.

There's more, but this is enough for now. This is simply another illustration to show how it isn't always about us, no matter what our painful pasts may lead us to believe.

Interesting

It's interesting to me how the posts I wrestle with the most are the ones that are the most important to me. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to press the "Publish Post" button.

I Lit The Match

Taking some old photos in hand, I struck the match and it lit with an acrid smell. I watched it for a moment before touching the dancing flames to the edge of the first old photograph.

The pictures are of me and my abuser from holidays, pictures of me having to sit next to him. The look on my face could not more vividly convey my torture than if I were screaming. My silent despair speaks volumes. The photographs bear silent witness to my pain--a pain that was so overlooked and ignored that these same pictures went into the family photo album.

If I destroy the pictures, there will no longer be a tangible reminder of all those years of pain however I already bear the emotional scar. That won't go away by burning the photos. In fact, it would be destroying a piece of evidence of how ignored my misery was. The information was there for anyone and everyone to see but they ignored it. Anyone who claims that I hid the pain too well for them to have had a clue is lying. They should have had a clue but it not something they wanted to see.

I lit the match, but in the end I blew it out.