🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
I’ve written previously about how I am having a reconnection in relationships recently and how that shows me that I have changed. Sometimes, like the man in the mirror, the changes are hard to see because we witness the entire gradual process. Each step is slight enough so as to go unnoticed.
The changes in these relationships are significant enough to become glaringly apparent to me. I am not sure how it happened, but I have become a man who can be depended upon by his family, and that is reflected in these relationships. Structure and routine definitely helps with that, as well as the time that has lapsed since the trauma caused by my actions in those individuals’ lives. Neither of those things lessens the value of the changes I have made to allow this to be possible. I can see the principles I have always professed reflected in the eyes of those who see me.
That is valuable to me. A very large part of the tenacity that I needed to make this possible, in cleaving to my principles was an acceptance of the guilt I bear for the consequences of my actions. An acceptance of my responsibility for my actions. I am not spewing regurgitated group material here. I am saying that the pain my actions caused to me through the consequences I caused other was overwhelmingly unbearable. The stress and difficulty of changing was tolerable in comparison.
I use that pain to correct my course when I get out of my lane. It is not something I feel I should ever forget, get over, or let go of. That pain may be the only form of empathy left after the upbringing that I have had. My childhood was a course study in how to destroy feelings of remorse or a sense of right from wrong. I never want to give up what little humanity I’ve managed to salvage.
Trust me; I am not saying this is what anyone else should do! My path is unique because I am not your standard sociopath. My way has to balance forces far different than your average person, so I am always going to be an aberration. That’s fine with me because I never liked molds anyway. (Except Penicillin, of course.)
Perhaps I just despise what I see as an easy way out because I believe I need to suffer for anything good. Yet, if the only good in my life comes from suffering, am I wrong in that?