When you are hurt time and time again, you can start to resent other people because you don’t want to feel that terrible pain that you once felt again.
You may ask, how do you even begin to forgive someone that has hurt you to the core of your soul?
Well, I’ve been through many heartbreaking situations, but the one that has hurt me the most, has been my mom not being there for me in my life.
There were many times when I had to fend for myself as a little girl. I constantly wondered how I was going to survive another day without the love of my mom. She would have her moments of doing my hair, helping me get dressed, things of that nature.
Those rare moments helped me from despising my mom for a while. But once I got in my teens, I developed a lot of hatred for her. Honestly, I believe it was always there.
It was dormant because I was trying to keep hope alive that one day, I would be treated as her daughter instead of someone she just tolerated. It got to a point where I didn’t want to see her face. There were nights that I had dreams of being taken away to a cozy home where love abounded, those dreams helped me to cope with living with my mom.
I had so much built-up aggression towards her. The abandonment that I felt from her was too much for me to mentally take. Also, it affected me physically. I would get horrible migraines because of how much I would cry, due to what I was going through. At night was when I would normally get them. I would curl up in my bed and pray that the pain I was feeling would be taken away.
I would try and have conversations with my mom about why she didn’t love me? Why did she treat me as though she didn’t want me? Some of her normal responses would be if I wasn’t so needy, I wouldn’t be feeling the way that I do. Or, if I didn’t expect so much out of her, then I would actually appreciate her. Neither response made any sense to me.
As my hatred grew for her, more and more the little peace of mind that I did have was withering away. The light I believed to see within my mom, was barely there anymore. I just started to see a dark soul walking around, talking to me, that was supposed to be my mom, but really didn’t act like it. I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into a dark hole of despair.
As the years passed, the main thing I noticed was I was the one hurting, I was the one crying, but the one I was crying about, didn’t cry any tears for me. I felt ridiculous. I knew that I had to stop focusing on someone that wasn’t focusing on me.
So, I pulled away from her a lot. I let go of what and how I wanted her to be as my mom and truly saw her for who she decided to be. Whenever she would decide to treat me like garbage, I would either walk away or let her know I can’t change her and how she feels about me.
However, I can change how I decide to handle the situation. She didn’t care. She continued through life as a heartless person. I decided that I deserved to have peace. I didn’t want to live my life with that animosity in my heart towards her anymore. After all, it was holding me back from being happy.
She didn’t deserve to have that place in my heart. Someone that truly loved me deserved to live there, not her. At times, I would look over at her and just remind myself that I forgive her. I wasn’t forgiving her so she could be happy.
I was forgiving her so that I could be.