The Dreamer ✓

Letter 16

NO.16; A LETTER TO SOMEONE YOU WISH COULD FORGIVE YOU

FEBRUARY 24th, 2014

Dear Me,

Today, I somehow wound up watching an episode of Jeremy Kyle and after arguing for about a minute with one of the guests (he does that a lot), Jeremy asked him and the audience if they could name one person they wish could forgive them. A person in the audience named his brother, he said he regretted not going to his wedding because of a misplaced sense of pride. The guest, a man in his mid-thirties who had slicked back greasy hair and wore a fake Ralph Lauren polo shirt named a boy from his childhood. Apparently, he'd let the boy get bullied when he could have stopped it and he's been seeking forgiveness ever since.

And it got me thinking. Who do I wish could forgive me? I started rattling off the people in my life, the names and faces I'd known over the years but there was no cutting guilt that told me forgiveness was needed. And then I thought back to a few weeks ago when I was weeping in my room over my failed attempt to write Mum a letter and I realised, maybe – maybe the person I wished could forgive was me.

I'm so tired of this bubbling wave of self-hatred that sits under the surface, waiting and waiting to erupt. I read somewhere that guilt is good. It's good because it encourages empathy and it gives you the urge to make amends. You have to deal with your guilt before it's too late or it will end up devouring you. I'm afraid it might devour me and in a sick kind of way, I almost want it to. I want to be devoured and left so hollow the end of my existence is seconds away. But I can't let that happen. I won't. I have to find this illusive path of self-forgiveness and walk through it and keep walking for how longer it takes, even when my body aches and my feet bleed I have to keep going. I have to keep going forward. I have to wade through my bleak desolation. I have to understand.

The art of self-forgiveness is so foreign it almost seems alien to me. I've forgiven others so many times over the years that it feels like second nature. That's the key word there, others. So, that's the great mystery in my life. How do you forgive yourself? Is that the first step to conquering your demons? Is that how you defeat yourself?

Maybe in order to move forward, I have to go move back. I have to understand my past and how it has brought me here. I have to understand myself and to do that I have to look in not out. If the only way out is in, then I am my own salvation.

Looking into myself is something I've always feared because I'm afraid of what I might find. Discovering yourself seems like an awfully dark adventure. What if it makes me hate myself even more? Do I really want to know who I am or am I content with this half-formed version I have conjured up for others? All these questions and no answer in sight. DC was right, I think the key here is acceptance. I need to accept that I've made mistakes because to err is human. Mistakes are inevitable but I can choose whether or not I learn from them.

I don't want to be my own enemy more. It's tiring and I can't do it anymore. Hate is a poisonous thing and I no longer wish to live in it. I seek forgiveness and for the first time in my life I realise it's not from others but from myself. I want to forgive myself because it might be the key to – to everything. The world would unlock before my eyes and I would stop snarling at myself long enough to see everything in colour. The sky would be bluer, the ice cream sweeter, my laugh brighter and all because the poison within me seeped out and stopped darkening my vision.

Forgiveness is not something that happens overnight, it's a long journey filled with longer days and longer nights but it's a journey I'm willing to make.

Love, Morgana.