We sometimes forget just how much our pasts inform our present. I visualize our pasts to be like a petulant kid who has uninvitingly intruded into your home, parks himself (it’s a boy in my head) in an inconspicuous corner of your house and refuses to leave. You’ve tried various approaches to get him to leave but he refuses to. He largely sits quietly in that corner. Pretty soon you hardly notice him anymore. So you go about your days like he wasn’t there. But occasionally, he lets out a shriek to remind you that he’s still in your house and then you experience the entire turmoil of having an intruder in your home all over again. But eventually you become complacent and not notice him again and you get on with your life. Except, he’s still in your home.
I think moving on from your past involves you knowing what you’re moving on from. My past has been viewed through a variety of filters and lenses that has severely distorted what really happened, what it really meant and how I eventually interact with it in my present. I have been trying recently to inquisitively prod and investigate these things in my mind, to open doors I had conveniently closed and kept shut with a huge sticker upfront that says ‘Out of sight, out of thoughts’. It hurts to drag these facts and events out into the light again and to properly see them for what they are.
It’s been a painfully humbling experience over the last couple of weeks. It feels a lot like skinning your inner man slowly with a pocket knife. I’ve had to face things that make me feel worthless, emasculated and emotionally immolated. Things that I have dressed up in pretty dresses that are in actual fact horrendously ugly in form and I have had to stare that ugliness in its face.
I see God as the social services worker that is eventually going to come around and remove that ‘petulant’ boy from my home. But right now, I have to first get to a point where I can consistently convince myself that that he needs to be removed. That involves me dragging a chair in front of him, looking into his eyes and seeing him for what he really is.
Something that should not be in here …
adrianyapck 