A Year of Pleasures: Forgiveness

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the full 

value of time and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. 

I promised to write, and write and write about the big and little things that happen to me in 2016 - focusing on the pleasures of my year. I can't say that I have been doing that, but what's worse is how I feel about it all.

I'm going to be honest. I don't feel as much like a Free-spirit as I should. I feel as if I'm suffocating right now. I have been taken down a path that I don't want to be on. I've been living with anger and bitterness and I am trying to get through it.
In trying to weed through the ups and down, the bitter and the sweet, I look around me every single day and I DO find the beauty in things. I'm learning how to continue to focus on these things, however small and move past...move past...move past. This is what I must do.

Thinking about anger and it's repercussions is a lesson within itself. I am learning about choices, and acceptance, and boundaries. I am learning that it's so easy to feel justified in my bitterness and anger when I am the victim in a situation. But, I realized recently that I need to shut the door to the misery that I cause myself in holding, accepting or being complicit in things that harm me.

I have carried this thought with me for a while now. I haven't been able to put it down, or throw it away. I have not been able to speak about it, or really reflect on it. I just carry it. That in itself is a heavy burden. The person that I once was is no longer. She hasn't disappeared, but she has certainly chained herself to a web of unhappiness, that (if left unchanged), could never benefit anyone.

I'm not one who cannot forgive. I am simply working through - foraging through my emotions after I cast away the heavy cloak of the anger at being wronged.Worse yet, it's knowing that my problem is not close to home, it is at home.
It's knowing that, and understanding that the pain inflicted upon me and those I care about is not something that the other party will just stop doing. It's coming to terms with words like "well that's just the way it is..."
So for me, it's about how to love through it, with it, beside it, and around it, without destroying everything/one that I care about.

So here's to pulling back the covers and looking at things from a different perspective (or at least trying to). I want to continue to fill these pages with the pleasures not pains of my life...