A Life Not So Forgiving

You can always make excuses for what you do wrong.  But you can’t always bring yourself to that place called accountability.  It is a place where we have to answer for what and who we are.  It is where we pay the piper and face judgement by either ourselves or by another.  For many years I had no accountability to anyone.  I answered to no one.  And that is where my life went really bad.

Growing up my memories of my early life varies and we have the good and the bad. In my world, the majority were the bad memories. Yes, it was bad. So bad that sometimes I wished I had not been born at all. Those were not the memories I would prefer to conjure up, nor do I try to reminisce about the past. In my life at that time I tried my hardest to forget yesterday and just try to survive another day and make it through to tomorrow.  I kept thinking of how much more I had to suffer and what I had to do to have God help me.  I didn’t then, nor now have an answer to that question.  My guess is that He was there and He was helping me somehow or some way.   But we all question.  But most of the time we don’t get an answer we want or fail to see that answer right in front of us.  I covered this in another chapter.  Remember?

While living in a world where it was me against everyone, it put me in a position where I had to fight for everything no matter who I was fighting.  My life was unforgiving and never gave anything up unless I took it.  I fought as hard as I could and paid a dear price when I lost.  But I survived and took with me many scars that will last a lifetime and beyond.  But as odd as it might sound, I cherish those scars and wear them as a badge of honor of what I survived and what God gave me for surviving.  It is because of those scars I am who I am.

But being so unforgiving, my journey through the early years sent me spiraling into a cruel world of lies, cheating, stealing, and un-remorseful acts of violence.  I did things that I wonder if I could ever be forgiven for.  I wondered if I could really see that there was a God and that He would forgive all that I have done.  Could I be pardoned?  There’s that word again.  Pardoned!

My entire life had been spent questioning just about everything that has come before me.  I was and still am suspicious of everyone.  It is embedded into my DNA and I am certain it will probably stay that way.  This is what causes me to question God and His purpose or even lack of purpose in my life.  I say it that way because I still question it all to this day.  I need to know what He wants and expects from me and why He wants it.  I talked about this in an earlier chapter and it seems to keep surfacing.

There was a time I thought God was simply a figment of everyone’s imagination.  So therefore I had nothing to look to for anything.  So if I was looking for forgiveness, something, or someone to forgive me, then I had nothing.  But life was not going to be forgiving at all and it was going to give me its worst and I had to fight with all I had to beat it.

As I grew up I never had opportunities that other children had.  I grew up thinking there was nothing more than what I was allowed to have and that nothing else was attainable.  Growing up I was the loser in my family and could probably be described as the black sheep. I was “the brother”: not their, our, or my brother.   When being introduced to other people, I would be introduced as “this is my son,” with no mention of a name. My sisters would say, “that’s my brother,” with no mention of a name. I was simply the son or brother.

Talk about an identity crisis! It’s no wonder I had no idea who I was and along with that, so many questions about having a purpose in life.

I heard some people say to my father, “I didn’t know you had a son.” Yes, there were times he did not even acknowledge I was his son or even existed. There were many, many names and words used to describe, introduce or talk about me. But it would be vile and inappropriate to say those things now.  Profanity became synonymous with communication around me and what was happening to me.

Imagine having the thought that nearly every day of your life your family did not acknowledge your existence. I was the last born and the last one thought of. I was dismissed, pushed aside, last in line, last to eat, last to get things and the last one thought of when planning things. This was my perception growing up. I know children think crazy things and they believe the world should revolve around them, but I was the puppy who couldn’t get to the food bowl fast enough before it was empty.  So believing that a God wanted me and loved me was not something I could believe.  Thus all the questions.

I lived my life recklessly because living cautiously left me vulnerable.  And being vulnerable meant getting hurt or worse.  It meant finding out that you didn’t matter and no one cared.  Vulnerability was my nemesis.  Being vulnerable gave me the sense that everyone was out to get me.  I became paranoid, scared, judgmental, defensive, and over-cautious.  But I wasn’t about to let them win.  Everything was all about me.  And all that mattered was me.  I didn’t have anyone I cared enough about to put before me, or worry about.  I had no one who cared for me the way I wanted.  I felt abandoned and left alone to survive on my own.  So I did.

Life offers no forgiveness for what you do.  Life does not care who you are, how much money you have, or where you live.  Life is ruthless and evil.  There is no order, no hierarchy, no middle ground or even a safe place.  We all deal with life and we all suffer the same consequences for what we do.  For some those consequences seem more sever, but the emotional effects offer the same end result.  We suffer regardless.

When I suffered through years of abuse I hated life.  I hated the people in my life and I hated being alive to live in this life.  There are people who don’t understand why others take their own life to exit this world.  I believe that those who don’t understand have not had the level of life’s experience that others have had.  And they have not had some of the difficult times and experiences that bring someone to the point of not wanting to be here any longer.  And it is so true that when people say that someone who takes their own life does so because they believe it would be a better world without them and this world does not need them.

Life doesn’t care whether you are here or not.  Life doesn’t care about your struggles.  Life doesn’t care!  Life goes on without us regardless if we need a break.  Life doesn’t wait for us to catch up.  I wanted life to stop and let me get off, but it seemed to speed up and make that impossible.

I remember the day that I consider to be the worst day I could ever have had.  I was about 10 years old and I was with my father.  He was an avid model airplane hobbyist.  We were at a flying field and he was doing his flying thing.  Thinking about it today I wish I could have foreseen what was about to happen.  But one of his friends happened to be there.  But he wasn’t doing anything but hanging around our car and my father’s planes.  Well he then approached me and started asking me about how I like planes and if I liked flying them.  He also started putting his hands on me in the wrong way.  This went on for a bit and he then pretty much had his way with me and my father just looked on and did nothing.  I remember looking at my father for help and to make it stop.  It never happened.  This was the life I lived.  This was the life that had no forgiveness, mercy or love.  It was a life not so forgiving.

Growing up I had to live through daily abuse.  I’m sure that it did not occur every single day of my life.  But as a child and in adolescence it seemed to be every day.  I found myself finding places to hide to avoid that abuse.  I spent a lot of days hiding in the woods, in closets, the backyard, friend’s houses, tree forts, and even under my bed.  I spent hours laying as still as possible under my bed when he was looking for me.  Sometimes he would find me where I was hiding.  Other times I won and got away with a day of no abuse.  Survival was a part of life as much as needing to eat is a part of anyone's life.  All of my cries for help were never heard.  The silence that followed every incident of abuse was deafening.  

Don't let life run you over and continue to victimize you.  No one has the power to stop you from being who and what you want regardless of what you suffered.  Use your past as fuel to ignite the fire that will make you something great in this unforgiving world.  Take life by the ears and scream as loud as you can right in it's face.