...In All Our affairs, p.151, "Sometimes I hear the quiet sobbing of this lonely child who is still a part of me. What she longs for now is no different than what she wanted then---a hug, a touch, a smile. How I dreaded the morning after a drinking bout: blood dried on the carpet, my mother's broken nose, blackened eyes hiding behind sunglasses in the dead of winter. Pieces of dishes were scattered, as if pieces of my heart lay broken on the cold floor. And so I lie weeping, reliving a nightmare I will not wake from, for I am not asleep.
"The reassurance which never came is still most often withheld; no longer from all-important Mom and Dad, but from all-important me. How often I scorn this lonely child I was, and sometimes still am. I belittle her "weakness," turn my back on her pain. It's so easy to intellectualize her hurting and unmercifully judge the validity of her feelings. She doesn't need a lecture, she needs love. She doesn't need a kick, she needs a caress. She doesn't need accusations, she needs acceptance. At the very times she needs me most, I've treated her coldly, with contemptuous indifference, causing the burning in her eyes and the aching in her heart to deepen.
"There are times now, if I am still enough to listen, that I hear her weeping. Her pain causes me great sadness, for she's suffered so much. Then, because of all I have learned in Al-Anon, I reach out my hand to her, help her to her feet, wipe the tears from her eyes, and gently hold her."
The nightmare for me is that I relive the legacy of staying in the dream instead of staying in the here and now. If I need a hug, I ask for it. When I remember. Sometimes I forget...and do without...like a long, lonely journey through a dry, parched desert...
Dear Lord, please help me remember to love and to be loved. As YOU Will. Love, Carol xoxox
No comments:
Post a Comment