Understanding

The day started as it always did lately. Jarred awake at too early of an hour, while most of the world still slumbers, the house quiet and dark. My clock to bright to look at for more than a second shows it's always between 3:49 and 5 o'clock.

The dream had been similar to the ones given previously this week. A life left behind yet all different than before. Sometimes the same location, or the same people, but always the same theme, playing in my mind. This week it was my ex. I didn't like to think about him at all. The mental and emotional abuse behind me. He had programmed my mind to want to die, I had fought suicide for far too long.

I awoke to the memories of the dream, focusing and refocusing, trying to figure out what it all meant. I know now that dreams are only there as a lesson. Like most of life we are here to learn and grow. There were bullets but no guns, my daughter, people who were supposed to be his parents yet weren't anyone I ever remember knowing unless we had done this all in a past lifetime as well.

The walls were covered in notes, cards, pictures both taken and drawn by hand. I took one down that was talking about what was expected for our marriage but it somehow disappeared before I could read it. Like a missing piece in the middle of a mysterious puzzle.

The dream itself is only a tool for understanding. Moments ago, while finishing a book that has taken much to long to read, I started to cry. Tears of understanding. I have loved this entire year. The year that everyone around me seems to fear, I have learned more about myself than I even want to know some days. Today is one of those days.

I am not perfect, I've made many mistakes of which I cannot even begin to fix. I can apologize to those I hurt. I can ask them to forgive me and move on with my life. When it comes down to it though we really need to forgive ourselves for anything that happens in our life because ultimately we are the ones who create our lives.

I hurt and left the only person who has ever truly loved me. Yes he hurt me to, but I never told him until years and years later. I wasn't raised to be able to speak up for myself. To be true to who I was and what I believed in. I was raised to do as I was told, to believe what I was told was true. I was hushed when I tried to say otherwise, to voice who I was or what I wanted in this world. I was silenced when my thoughts were not the same as those around me. I did not learn to speak up for myself, I learned to please others. I didn't learn to set boundaries for myself but to always let others have their say, to not hurt others by my words.

I don't blame my parents they were doing the best they could with what they knew. I blame myself for not standing up and learning to speak for myself. I blame myself for not voicing my opinions and feelings in fear of hurting someone else's feelings. In the meantime I wasted a lot of my life in pain, doubt and fear. I drug my kids through that as well and there for didn't do my best for them either.

I have spent the rest of my life holding it inside. Not ready to admit to myself that I did this. I let others walk all over me, treating me badly, treating me how I felt I should be treated because of what I had done to others in my past. We are only but a reflection of ourselves in others. I didn't let myself heal before moving on to the next person and teaching them to treat me just as badly as I treated myself.

I've held on to it for years. Thinking that I was good. That I had forgiven and moved on. The dreams of late are telling me something else though. Reminding me that I didn't have control of others, but I did have control of myself. I made mistakes because I am human, I am not perfect.

I don't have to pay for those mistakes for the rest of my life though. I need to forgive to forget. I need to forgive to move on, and truly let it all go so I can change my life for the better. I have to forgive my self for hurting someone I loved. I have to forgive myself for living in the darkest of spaces with the most horrible of beliefs of myself and others. I have to forgive myself before it's too late and I waste the rest of my life alone, without love, hope or happiness.

I have to let go of the past, stand strong in the future and know that it is okay that I made mistakes. He is strong now. He is happy and loved and moving forward with his own life and has been for a really long time. The dream itself that haunts me has nothing to do with the person I claim to hate. The hate is really just a reflection of how I feel about myself.

I made a mistake. I am not a horrible person that doesn't deserve the best. I made a mistake that I have learned from if not once but many times over has it been recreated, shown to me, lived by me and always with the same results. Only when I forgive myself will I grow and change the direction in which my life can go. I lived, I loved, I made mistakes. Its okay.

I'm still a wonderful person who tries to always be kind to others. Who gives even when I don't have much to give. I still try not to hurt others feelings, to make them feel worthwhile, to help them find their light and shine it to the world. I'm learning to love my smile. I'm learning to love my laugh, and the way it sounds in my head. Kind of crazy, kind of loud.

I'm learning to accept the way I don't like my feet, my toes so long and curved unlike others. I'm learning to see that even though my hair is not long and thick and beautiful it's still okay because it's me. I'm learning to see that I may not know how to do household things, like plumbing and electrical, I do know how to cook, I can sew a hole in your pants or make you a craft. I can paint from my soul and I can listen to your problems and tell you I love you anyway.

I can grow and live and laugh. I can have hope that the world will keep moving forward into the light I see. I can lead them to be kind to one another by showing how much it can mean. I can make the world I want to see by creating my own reality. We all can and do create our own reality. I just wish I had learned this earlier in my life. Maybe in the next life I'll have grown enough to see a better world for me from the start.

My Grandma used to always try and teach me. Peace within myself. Forgiving to be free. I cannot count the times she told me to focus on the good, the positive. That as long as I focused on the good I wanted, the good that was out there, then the good is what I would find. I didn't understand then, but I do now. This year has been the best year for me in understanding myself and what makes the world. Don't focus on the darkness for it lets it inside. Instead focus on the light you shine and the darkness will have no place to hide.

It might take me a minute but I'll forgive myself because the dreams won't stop the lesson from being learned. Shine bright like a diamond. Where the darkness has no place to hide. Shine bright for myself and for others because the tunnel doesn't last forever and the next chapter can the best I've ever seen.