I believe that there is too much blame in the world. Precious little responsibility taken for our own mistakes. So, when I wrote the following, I had responsibility and not-shifting-the-blame on my mind —
“Bitter/Sweet Writings of Home
by: Season Hain
When they had the chance to know her
they realized
– even before she did –
that she was not their home. They couldn’t be with a person they decided not to know.
Someone who was so easy to blame for everything.
They made their choices. Now,
it was past time for her to make her own.
She had to choose to move on,
move past and
move away from her own flesh and blood.
She was through with the grief… and panic…and anxiety…and hope.
She realized that by allowing negativity in its entirety, she was legitimizing their hatred of her.
As though she deserved it.
No longer could she give up and
give away her power. After all….
They put to rest the notion of blood being thicker than water.
Blood, to them, meant nothing where she is concerned.
Yet, it was the hope she clung to all those many lean years.
She thought, really thought, that if she were a good person……
Then somehow the window of redemption and repair would open as an opportunity for her sons to see how worthy of them she truly was.
Yet, wisely,
she finally realized they were not her home as she had not been theirs.
To them all she would be – should she be anything at all
other than a stench in the nostrils of the judgmental –
was an afterthought in a drunken conversation.
…late at night, on the davenport of despair, when all else had been discussed.
………and not even God can change their collective past.
Her heart was with them as it would always be
but home was not in it.
Home was letting go.
Home was letting them continue to despise her and all of her mistakes,
misjudgments
and youthful selfishness.
Home for her had been and truly was a solitary existence.
Home knows, for her, that we are what and who we are because of and in spite of our past.
It ruins us.
It changes us.
We can move on, go forward, step lightly around it but it is what it is.
There remains no shame.
It just is.
What you’ve done; how you’ve coped; all the choices;…it just IS.
No chances to make amends.
No magic window opening.
No reason to explain – no one wants to hear it.
She fully realized that home is where and with whom you find it.
Hers was definitely – definingly – not with them.
She had to release the memories and the longing and the hope – the sweet and the bitter –
and run toward home.”
The preceding piece was written from a place deep in my soul that yearns to undo the colossal mistakes made earlier in my life. Sadly, realistically that window does not open to allow the bad out and the good in. Sometimes the broken pieces are too numerous to reglue. Yet, your life and how you’ve learned to live it is your responsibility. There has to come a point after which it is not your parents fault. It’s not the fault of that fly ball you didn’t catch. Not the fault of the role that eluded you. Not because of a job you longed for that was granted to someone else. Your life, the good the bad the bitter and the sweet is just that. YOUR life. A life of your own doing and making. No matter how horrid your childhood or young adulthood; no matter how horrific the hurt or jubilant the victory. Accept the credit and the blame, get out of your own way and go on to be a blessing to someone.