This one time, I hurt this woman really bad.
I figured I had hurt her, but I didn't realize how bad because I was young and because I didn't particularly want to realize it.
After all, she had hurt me too. My hurt was more real to me than hers.
I once loved a guy who loved me very much. He was there for me when I needed him the most, he saved my life.
He knew all my secrets and he even asked me to marry him. He believed in me and said I was the greatest person he had ever met.
I was young and afraid of being loved. I was used to be being hurt and that felt more comfortable to me than this uncertain true love I had never known.
As a little girl when my conscious thought began I was alone, with a dead mother and an absent family. My caregivers ran a gamut from aloof to abusive. Forever I would think of myself as alone against the world, and unlovable.
So of course, I broke this guy's heart. I put him through hell. I threw him away. He was the beloved wolf, and I threw the cruel stones. For his own good. To spare him, and me, from the day when he would wake up and realize he didn't love me. That I was ugly, and bad, and not worth the trouble.
No foster mother or father, no family member distant or close, nobody who ever tried to bear with me the burden of keeping me alive until I came of age, ever seemed to think that I was worth the trouble.
It hurt. The pain became the norm.
So in my adult life, a guy who wanted to take away all of my pain. This was too good to be true. Whether I elected to or not, I had to snuff it out.
He got really hurt.
He probably got hurt worse than the woman that I hurt.
What they have in common is twofold: I tore them apart... and they were only trying to raise me out of the ashes they found me in.
I see that now. I didn't then. I didn't have it in me to see it.
My life revolved around what I wanted and needed. I justified this selfishness by the fact that nobody else was looking out for me.
(In reality, there were scores of people loving and helping me. Scores of people. I was well liked and knew good people. It wasn't something you could wrap in a neat little box and call family, but I had love and help.)
So, even though most of my friends would describe me as a good hearted and caring person, I had hurt some people. Good people. Hurt them badly.
As my life went on my goals became more noble and by my early 20s I started to learn that there wasn't just me. There was a planet full of hurting people and that I wanted to try and help them. One person at a time if need be - in gratitude for all the people that had helped me. I had since gotten over the fact that they weren't family, proper.
So I tried to help this one guy with his problems.
Man, he had some bad problems. Bad like mine. Hard to say which was worse.
He was certainly very vulnerable from all his problems, and we had an awful lot in common, and before I knew it he had fallen in love with me.
I resisted returning his affections for as long as I could. His wife had just left him and it seemed like an awfully bad idea.
His wife that left him even tried to give me the green light. Said their marriage problems came from her not loving him the way a wife is supposed to love her husband. She was impressively nonchalant about this fact. She was adamant that it was over.
Inevitably, I fell in love with him.
Not the kind of love like I had before for warmly-worships-me guy, where he made me happy and that was the basis for my love.
I loved this guy in the noblest way. I gave up everything I had to help him. I was there for him in every way that a person can be there for someone else.
Now, this guy was different too. Pain was the norm for him also. His own mother gave him up when he was a preteen.
Gave him up as in to a workhouse that was supposed to turn bad kids into good kids, or at least hide them away where their high society Moms wouldn't have to be bothered by them.
Then his Mom died. He wasn't even old enough to vote yet, and things had never gotten better between them.
So, you can imagine what happened next.
Guy got his first taste of unconditional love, and he thought it was poison. The same way I did the first time I ever experienced it.
So he put me through hell. He threw me away. To go return to the puddle of vomit that was the woman who never loved him nearly half as much as I did.
Nothing about him was ever good enough for her - and whether he realized it or not he accepted that because the pain was the norm for him.
As if one day he would prove himself good enough for her and convince her not to throw him away the way his mother did.
That day would never come, because pain was the norm for her too.
She was never good enough, so any man that loved and accepted her fully most be messed up. Guy must have been messed up. So nothing he did was ever good enough.
They tried for years to break apart, but they were stuck in their own dysfunctional death loop.
Until I came along.
I changed that, by loving him for exactly what he was without conditions.
He responded by throwing me away. Repeatedly.
Darker times were on the horizon for him, as someone with a noble love like the one I felt for him when he called I was there for him.
I didn't push down the pain that he caused me, I felt it all and I forgave it all. The way that you do when you love someone without condition.
Its not really love if it has to be earned by good behavior.
One day I realized. I learned this love from the guy that I had hurt. He was the first person my whole life long that saw me for who I was and loved me for me.
I remembered the woman I had hurt.
I realized that this was karma.
If you think that karma is a bitch you still don't get it.
Karma is a teacher.
It shows you the pain that you have caused others to teach you to see things from their perspective.
Karma the Teacher is not afraid to flunk you, to hold you back, to make you repeat the same cycle until you get it either.
You cannot fool karma. You pass when you pass. When you have truly learned, then you can move forward.
I remember, my warm guy - the one who never hurt me. The day that I realized the mistake that I made and would do anything I could to get him back and to make it right, but it was too late. He had moved on.
I wouldn't move on. Etched into his heart and history I would always be the stupid bitch that he gave his heart to completely and turned around and threw him away.
So, when this guy came to his senses about me I was conflicted.
It is almost excruciating the pain that I endured just by loving this guy who threw me away.
I am a good student though. I knew there was only one way to get out of this scenario and secure the possibility of happiness for my future.
I had to break the cycle. If I threw him away, I would get thrown away. If I was cruel to him, surely cruelty would be waiting for me.
I had to forgive him. I had to offer him grace and redemption.
I had to be the change that I wanted in my life.
I had to give him love the way that I wanted it, or I knew I would never find it.
So that's where we stand.
I have been wronged. I have been hurt. I have been humiliated by the man that I love. I have forgiven him when he did not deserve it.
I have also been given grace. More than I deserve.
I want redemption for him. I want hope for him.
When you love someone unconditionally, that's what you do. That's what it costs. That's what it requires of you.
It takes every last inch of you.
I gave him the love that I wanted, the forgiveness I wanted, the chance to make things right that I wanted.
I've got a weather eye on the horizon looking for my chance to make things right.
Even if it never comes, I broke the cycle.
On to the next test.
I figured I had hurt her, but I didn't realize how bad because I was young and because I didn't particularly want to realize it.
After all, she had hurt me too. My hurt was more real to me than hers.
I once loved a guy who loved me very much. He was there for me when I needed him the most, he saved my life.
He knew all my secrets and he even asked me to marry him. He believed in me and said I was the greatest person he had ever met.
I was young and afraid of being loved. I was used to be being hurt and that felt more comfortable to me than this uncertain true love I had never known.
As a little girl when my conscious thought began I was alone, with a dead mother and an absent family. My caregivers ran a gamut from aloof to abusive. Forever I would think of myself as alone against the world, and unlovable.
So of course, I broke this guy's heart. I put him through hell. I threw him away. He was the beloved wolf, and I threw the cruel stones. For his own good. To spare him, and me, from the day when he would wake up and realize he didn't love me. That I was ugly, and bad, and not worth the trouble.
No foster mother or father, no family member distant or close, nobody who ever tried to bear with me the burden of keeping me alive until I came of age, ever seemed to think that I was worth the trouble.
It hurt. The pain became the norm.
So in my adult life, a guy who wanted to take away all of my pain. This was too good to be true. Whether I elected to or not, I had to snuff it out.
He got really hurt.
He probably got hurt worse than the woman that I hurt.
What they have in common is twofold: I tore them apart... and they were only trying to raise me out of the ashes they found me in.
I see that now. I didn't then. I didn't have it in me to see it.
My life revolved around what I wanted and needed. I justified this selfishness by the fact that nobody else was looking out for me.
(In reality, there were scores of people loving and helping me. Scores of people. I was well liked and knew good people. It wasn't something you could wrap in a neat little box and call family, but I had love and help.)
So, even though most of my friends would describe me as a good hearted and caring person, I had hurt some people. Good people. Hurt them badly.
As my life went on my goals became more noble and by my early 20s I started to learn that there wasn't just me. There was a planet full of hurting people and that I wanted to try and help them. One person at a time if need be - in gratitude for all the people that had helped me. I had since gotten over the fact that they weren't family, proper.
So I tried to help this one guy with his problems.
Man, he had some bad problems. Bad like mine. Hard to say which was worse.
He was certainly very vulnerable from all his problems, and we had an awful lot in common, and before I knew it he had fallen in love with me.
I resisted returning his affections for as long as I could. His wife had just left him and it seemed like an awfully bad idea.
His wife that left him even tried to give me the green light. Said their marriage problems came from her not loving him the way a wife is supposed to love her husband. She was impressively nonchalant about this fact. She was adamant that it was over.
Inevitably, I fell in love with him.
Not the kind of love like I had before for warmly-worships-me guy, where he made me happy and that was the basis for my love.
I loved this guy in the noblest way. I gave up everything I had to help him. I was there for him in every way that a person can be there for someone else.
Now, this guy was different too. Pain was the norm for him also. His own mother gave him up when he was a preteen.
Gave him up as in to a workhouse that was supposed to turn bad kids into good kids, or at least hide them away where their high society Moms wouldn't have to be bothered by them.
Then his Mom died. He wasn't even old enough to vote yet, and things had never gotten better between them.
So, you can imagine what happened next.
Guy got his first taste of unconditional love, and he thought it was poison. The same way I did the first time I ever experienced it.
So he put me through hell. He threw me away. To go return to the puddle of vomit that was the woman who never loved him nearly half as much as I did.
Nothing about him was ever good enough for her - and whether he realized it or not he accepted that because the pain was the norm for him.
As if one day he would prove himself good enough for her and convince her not to throw him away the way his mother did.
That day would never come, because pain was the norm for her too.
She was never good enough, so any man that loved and accepted her fully most be messed up. Guy must have been messed up. So nothing he did was ever good enough.
They tried for years to break apart, but they were stuck in their own dysfunctional death loop.
Until I came along.
I changed that, by loving him for exactly what he was without conditions.
He responded by throwing me away. Repeatedly.
Darker times were on the horizon for him, as someone with a noble love like the one I felt for him when he called I was there for him.
I didn't push down the pain that he caused me, I felt it all and I forgave it all. The way that you do when you love someone without condition.
Its not really love if it has to be earned by good behavior.
One day I realized. I learned this love from the guy that I had hurt. He was the first person my whole life long that saw me for who I was and loved me for me.
I remembered the woman I had hurt.
I realized that this was karma.
If you think that karma is a bitch you still don't get it.
Karma is a teacher.
It shows you the pain that you have caused others to teach you to see things from their perspective.
Karma the Teacher is not afraid to flunk you, to hold you back, to make you repeat the same cycle until you get it either.
You cannot fool karma. You pass when you pass. When you have truly learned, then you can move forward.
I remember, my warm guy - the one who never hurt me. The day that I realized the mistake that I made and would do anything I could to get him back and to make it right, but it was too late. He had moved on.
I wouldn't move on. Etched into his heart and history I would always be the stupid bitch that he gave his heart to completely and turned around and threw him away.
So, when this guy came to his senses about me I was conflicted.
It is almost excruciating the pain that I endured just by loving this guy who threw me away.
I am a good student though. I knew there was only one way to get out of this scenario and secure the possibility of happiness for my future.
I had to break the cycle. If I threw him away, I would get thrown away. If I was cruel to him, surely cruelty would be waiting for me.
I had to forgive him. I had to offer him grace and redemption.
I had to be the change that I wanted in my life.
I had to give him love the way that I wanted it, or I knew I would never find it.
So that's where we stand.
I have been wronged. I have been hurt. I have been humiliated by the man that I love. I have forgiven him when he did not deserve it.
I have also been given grace. More than I deserve.
I want redemption for him. I want hope for him.
When you love someone unconditionally, that's what you do. That's what it costs. That's what it requires of you.
It takes every last inch of you.
I gave him the love that I wanted, the forgiveness I wanted, the chance to make things right that I wanted.
I've got a weather eye on the horizon looking for my chance to make things right.
Even if it never comes, I broke the cycle.
On to the next test.
