I finally found a doctor in this area who prescribes bio-identical hormone therapy. Now if only he will prescribe HGH my life will be complete <grin, that actually was a real joke, ha ha>. I go for surgery down in Little Rock on the 8th of October, 13 days from now. They are going to fix my hernia, that big ass bulge of intestines hanging out below my left breasticle. After this surgery, I hopefully will no longer have to worry about dying from a strangulated upper intestinal blockage.

So after this surgery, I gave myself 4 weeks to get well enough to travel to Springdale to see this other doctor. Hopefully he is the last step medically in moving toward full and total wellness. After that, everything else is up to me and my determination to be healthy.

I ran into an old friend today. She hadn't seen me in forever. Like most people who have not seen me in forever, she was shocked and did not recognize me until she looked me in the eye. Actually, I ran into two old friends today, both of them around my age and both of them looking haggard the way most middle aged folk look once the HGH is permanently gone from their bodies.

Both of them asked me what I had done. Beau actually asked me in a side ways kind of way, not wanting to offend me if the weight loss was because of a deathly illness or something. Gayle just wanted to know how I had gotten so thin. I told them both that I had chosen life over death. I decided that I wanted to live. Living as healthy as I could live, ageing in wellness and health. I chose life.

See, I could have not changed my lifestyle when I found out I had diabetes. A lot of people don't. They just take their insulin but continue to live as they lived before, learning to use the insulin to eat around their disease (that means they eat the same way they ever ate, but have learned to take more insulin to control the glucose surge they are creating by eating that birthday cake, I don't eat that birthday cake). I did too much research to continue to live as I have been living all these years. I changed the very core of how I lived my life. I changed how I ate, I changed my activity level (that means I work out, however, right now I am not working out because I injured the hernia really bad working out in ways that are not healthy for a hernia to be worked out, so until after I heal from the surgery, I will have to live with just walking, no more crunches or leg lifts). I changed my whole attitude about life in general. I decided that I no longer wanted to live feeling like I was dying. I wanted to live feeling like I was alive and fully vital.

And that is how I did it. And how I am still doing it. I am still not at my final goal (if there truly is a "final" goal), but I will be soon enough. I know now that I do not have to live feeling like death warmed over and only feeling worse with each passing day. I know now that growing older with aches and pains is not inevitable, you can control, even take complete charge of how you age. I chose healthfully and with grace. I just plan to live in excellent health until my life is over.

To paraphrase the Pet Shop Boys "It is not easy, don't give up now, you can choose, happiness is an option".

I choose happiness.

Anam cara, Celtic for soul friend. Anam cara's are people with whom you have a deep soul connection, people you love and accept unconditionally and utterly.

I have begun to see that this was where I was headed several years back in my relating with others. I wanted to be able to relate to people on a deep core level, without walls, without judgment, utterly accepting their being for who they are and loving that person from a place of unconditional love. I have been so lost in this last couple of years (at least since January of 06 anyway), that I had lost sight of this path I was headed down exploring. It doesn't matter how or why I was diverted from that path of exploration, what matters now is that I am remembering where I was going and what I was exploring.

I had a glimmer of a lesson learned just a bit ago.  Just how far off of a path my dysfunction can take me. How far can allowing judgment of others and myself can take me away from the ultimate goal? Apparently enough that I lost sight of it.

Seventeen years and 8 months ago I was meditating and an insight came to me about relationships. All relationships. All relating, to everyone. Several days after this insight, I heard a person speaking at a meeting. His message was about how everything is about relationships and right relating to people from a place of unconditional love. What he was speaking about was exactly what I had been shown in my meditation. Three days after I heard him speak, I had the most cathartic experience of my life to date. I didn't go seeking this experience out, it just came to me while I was writing in my journal. It changed me forever in an instant. I was shown/felt/experienced/enveloped to the core of my being in unconditional universal love. I lost all fear. In an instant I fell deeply in love with myself and was able to love everyone I encountered with that exact same unconditional "in love". When I say everyone, I mean everyone. Even the guy at the grocery store checking out in front of me. I could just look at someone, see their real true core self, their very heart and love them beyond words, the way you think God must love everyone.

I was 35 years old when this life changing event was given to me. I have tried to sustain the ability to love that unconditionally for these last 17 years and 8 months. Between my own working on my own things within myself that make me behave dysfunctionally and then being in relationship (any kind of relationship) with other humans, I have slowly grown further and further away from that initial experience. When I grow close with someone, I am still able to love unconditionally, but strangers? For get it, I tend to ignore people I do not know unless forced to meet them. I don't have the energy anymore to love people I barely know with that kind of love.

I haven't grown more judgmental with people I don't know, I just don't have the energy to give from that place of core unconditional love. I haven't figured out what it takes to sustain that, like make it a permanent part of me, like breathing, or my skin. I have let base human emotions take over in my life, so much so that anger became my all consuming emotion for far too many months. It took me even further away from being able to love always from a place of unconditionality.

To love that deeply, to be able to give love like that to anyone takes an enormous love of self. You must love yourself so utterly and unconditionally that you are able to give from the depths of your being without fear. I have done this a multitude of times with more people than I can ever number. But could I do it now? No. I know I can't right now. I am still too wounded, whether I remember how I was wounded or not. The wound is still tender, too tender to touch yet, no longer festering, but tender. My ability to love myself utterly has not returned completely. Soon though, soon.

I have asked for healing for myself in so many ways, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And I see the physical results very clearly. I asked for this weight to be taken from me after so many years of harboring it. I have asked for my physical health to be restored and I see it clearly as each day passes. I physically feel a thousand times better than I have in over 10 years. I know my prayers/intentions are answered, I am healing, in more ways than one. Soon, very soon.

Univeral oneness/unconditional love, right relationships, anam cara, that soul connection, loving utterly from your core unconditionally. Back on this path of exploration. Moving forward again, making progress, shedding the bullshit (true Taurean bullshit I might add) and moving onward and upward.

When I was a child, I had one of a few immediate reactions to pain, be it mental, emotional and/or physical. One, I retreated into a protective shell, two I became enraged, and three, I lashed out at whatever might be the most handy item (or being) to lash out at at the moment.

When my parents where beating me mercilessly, I tended to go to two and remain there consoling myself until the physical pain subsided. If my brother decided to kick over my Lincoln Log house I was building I tended to go directly to two and then an immediate jump to number three in about 0.1 seconds. Depending on which brother it was, three was an option that was best exercised only on my little brother as my big brother could kick my ass just looking at me he was that much bigger and older. He also happened to be a little psycho as my parents tended to beat him worse than us other two siblings because he was after all, the oldest. So going off on Mike when he did something shitty to you (which was often and repeatedly on a daily basis) wasn't really an option unless you wanted your ass kicked.

My therapist diagnosed me with PTSD in 1989. It was the diagnosis she used to get my insurance company to pay for my therapy.  I had no idea what PTSD was at the time, but if it made the insurance company pay then, whatever, I was good with it.  She tried explaining to me that PTSD was what soldiers coming home from war experienced. Something to the effect that they saw this disorder a lot in Viet Nam War vets. I still didn't get it, much anyway.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sounds psychobabblish doesn't it? An after severe and/or repeated physical, emotional and/or mental trauma reaction is pretty much what it boils down to. Soldiers endure some of the most horrendous sights and experiences any human being can ever see or experience. So horrendous that they cannot cope emotionally with their experiences. Basically what my therapist was saying was that my childhood had been war to me.

Enduring the ragings of a dry drunk, never knowing if just breathing in the same room with him would set him off on a rage at you, which might or might not end up in a severe beating, I guess is a lot like a soldier out on patrol, never knowing if a land mine is going to blow them up at any moment to a child. Always on edge, always walking on eggshells, never knowing when it's coming, when he's going to kill you just because you happen to be there in the wrong place or the wrong time. Apparently that causes severe stress in a child.

And then living with the enabler, my mom, who also endured the rages of her husband and then promptly took it out on her children when said husband was not around, doubled your pleasure, doubled your fun. The fact that any of us survived to adulthood still entact mentally amazes me. Mike (the evil big brother) endured the worst of it. He got it bad, all the time. Which only made him act out all the more, which only got his ass beaten even more severely. Scott (the whiney little brother) got it the least because he was the favored son of the enabling mother/wife. I being the middle child and the only girl, got it kind of in the middle (duh), although I did get it much worse from Mom than from Dad than Scott did.

Mike, being severely mentally, emotionally and physically abused by both parents, but especially Dad, turned around and took his pain and rage and doled it out on Scott and myself in good measure. Which is why I had a lot of ruined Lincoln Log houses or whatever. More than anything, he did little torture things to us, like holding our heads under water, or stuffing us in a small kitchen cabinet and then locking the door so that we couldn't get out. These were things that didn't leave marks so that if we told on him, there was no proof. Sometimes though, despite the fact that it would leave a mark, he would just haul off and slug one or both of us, just for the hell of it.

I tended to be the protector of Scott, him being the smallest and most defenseless of us two younger siblings. So Scott really did get the least of it all.

But the end results of this family environment was three kids with serious rage issues. I, as my brothers did, tended to go directly to anger and bypass pain entirely. As we grew older, the anger at the repeated trauma inflicted on us turned into severe rage. A rage that took me years and several thousand dollar in therapy to not just control, but over come that which triggered the rage. It was pain, emotional, mental, and/or physical that caused the rage. I had to learn to recognize the triggers of pain first. Then deal with those triggers.

What I really had to do was go back and relive all that pain and suffering as a child in an attempt to heal from it all. I won't go into the details of it all, suffice to say it was painful, but it was also cathartic in that it changed me and how I related to the world around me. I was actually able to forgive Dad, Mom and Mike for everything I endured as a child. I learned to accept that it was my responsibility to fix the damage that occurred and heal myself. I also learned to see where all that abuse as a child had caused me to behave in ways that were abusive to myself and others. I learned to take responsibility for my actions, to stop blaming other people, to own up to the things I had done and to make amends for my actions if at all possible.

This is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of how I got to where I am today. I am by no means perfect and anyone who knows me knows I can be a royal asshole, often. Basically what I have now are tools that allow me to either not go to that dysfunctional place of reacting to what once was painful stimuli to me, or if I do react because the pain is greater than I can endure at the moment, to fix what I have done in reaction to the painful stimuli.

Owning up to being a complete ass and having fallen back into old dysfunctional behavior is not easy. It's humbling to say the least.

I reacted to painful stimuli, severe, traumatic, painful stimuli back in January. At first I reacted in what I felt was the most healthy way to deal with what was at best a bad situation. And I did pretty good as long as I didn't have to face the cause of the painful stimuli. It was when I was repeatedly assaulted (read into this that it felt like assault to me) with that painful stimuli that I broke down after a number of months and went into dysfunction mode.

After a few months a pure emotional hell, I decided that the painful stimuli wasn't ever going to go away. So I had to do something to make the pain in my own self go away. And that is when forgiveness came up as a subject in my head. I had to learn to forgive no matter what. Whether the abuse was going to go on forever or not, I had to learn inside myself how to let it all go and forgive period.

Have I gotten there yet? I am pretty sure I haven't. Mainly because I still am unable to let go and just forgive period, no matter what the truth of the situation is or isn't. I have to get to the place where it doesn't really matter to me anymore what really happened, I have to let go and forgive period. Just like I had to look at Dad, Mom and Mike and know that despite all they did to me, they reallywere doing the best they knew how to do given their own histories.

But the reality of real forgiveness is, it doesn't matter if you know the history behind an abusive situation and how it transpired or why, none of that matters. Real forgiveness just forgives and lets go because it must. Because real forgiveness is unconditional. Unconditional love.

I am not there yet. But I am working diligently on it. Working, asking for help, opening my heart to change forever. So that when confronted with assault of any kind from any person or situation, I can let go immediately, never feel the sting of pain, always coming from that place of unconditional love, of self and of others.

That's where I am at right now. Working hard and with grace and love of my own being for a cathartic change.

I realize that some of you folks out there have contraptions that tell you how and where people found your blog/journal and came to visit. Some of you also have your site listed on other sites for people with similar interests to come and visit your site if they please. Also, folk like you probably have far more hits to your site than I do. My site is visted by the handful of people that I have given out the address to. Occasionally a stranger will wander in, but not very often. I watch the hits to see how they go up with each new posting. It goes up maybe 5, 6 hits with each new posting. That means that the few folk that actually have my address, checked to see the new posting. On very rare occasions it will go up 10 hits. I am guessing that a stranger or two wandered in here accidentally because of my headliner or profile or something that seemed of interest to them.

So I have this sort of informal survey going on in my head here. I want to know what percentage of hits to your own site do you feel are actually people you don't know who wandered on to your site accidentally (as in not from a place where you have your site listed to bring in visitors), just folk who wandered in off the internet.

I am guessing that I have maybe an overall less than 2% of all hits since it's creation in 2004. I don't go out and invite people in from anywhere else. If someone was looking for me, you would have to know I was #1 on AOL, and 2# my screen name (I have 7 of them). I have never used my real name ever on any thing I have ever done online. Period. I can't even find me when I do an online search for myself under my real name. There are only a handful of people on earth who know my nickname is/was Doc or Doc J. And only slightly more than that who know my email address.

I think I am pretty hard to find out there in the ether. Me and my journal(s) are pretty much obscure considering the trillions of web pages that exist online. I am like a spec of sand out there on the beach. If you found me while searching for the real me, you pretty much seriously lucked out.

I sincerely don't care if this blog gets read by other people. This really is a journal, my inner thoughts rambling around and getting put down here. I am not trying to find like minded people out there who want to agree with me, or converse with me. I am just placing thoughts to page.

And why might you say do I do that here and not in a 3 ring note book? Oh, I have billions of those too, from as far back as my teens. All saved and tucked away for no one in particular to ever read. Most likely they along with most of my other memorabilia will be thrown in the dumpster upon my death. I write here because I am lazy. I post here because I don't have to create files, or back anything up on a disk, or do anything other than type down what I am thinking about and then hit save. I also don't have to get writer's cramp of ink on my hands. Boom, it's done and over with and even if my hard drive crashes, it's still here on the internet, waiting for me to keep writing in it again and again.

Boring eh? Yeah, but that's me, boring and lazy. See how easy? Now hit save J.

I just realized, literally moments ago, that I should have saved some of my old size 46 and 48 pants for those after major weight loss pictures skinny people love to take of the fat person standing inside their old pants holding them out 16 inches from their waist and grinning like a jack-n-ape now that they are a size 28 waist or whatever.

You will never see that kind of picture of me grinning like a fool in my old pants. One, because I will never be a size 28 waist and two, because I gave all those old clothes to the thrift store. I think the last time I was a size 28 waist I was probably 14, maybe. It's not that I don't think I couldn't lose enough weight to be a size 28, it's because (and you will understand this if you have ever been obese and lost a hundred pounds or more) you have so much loose skin left that never goes away with out plastic surgery, therefore, it would be impossible to have that waist size.

So I am shooting for a 32 or 30 waist. I am in very loose 36s right now. I actually fit into a pair of Sue's 34s a couple of days ago. My loose skin around my gut was hanging over, but they were not uncomfortable.

I weighed in at 174 pounds just a few minutes ago. That's almost 30 pounds away from my new goal weight. My new goal weight is 145 before surgery (to remove Rocky the Flying Squirrel from my arms and thighs, he will weigh about 10 pounds when I reach my goal weight). If you saw Rocky on my arms right now you would understand my need for the plastic surgery. I theoretically could hang glide without the hand glider right now. Thirty more pounds from now and my arms could rival a 747. I am not planning on having my abdomin skin removed. I just don't care about that. No one will ever see it, ever. I do not have sex with other people anymore and I don't plan on doing that with anyone ever again. So I have decided that the only time someone will see me completely naked again will be at the doctor's office or if they walk in on me while I am in the bath tub.

In 8 months I have lost 65 pounds. In the last two years I have lost a total of 105 pounds so far. It's kind of surreal in a way to me. I never thought I could lose this weight I have carried for so many years now. But here it is just melting off me and all because I decided to live. Because I asked theuniverse to make me healthy. And here I am, getting healthy.

Remember forgiveness? I do. I asked the universe a few weeks back to help me learn to forgive. The world turns, the universe brings you ways to help in the process. Painful ways to help in the process. I was having a painful (more so for them than for me) phone conversation with someone this afternoon and I was telling them about my asking the universe to help me learn to forgive and let go of the past. I told her that it had all gone beyond my ability to do it without help, that I had asked for someone to be sent to help me. And whom did the universe send? The person I was having this very conversation with this afternoon. And it happened in a phone conversation that she and I had had a week or so before hand.

Through all my anger and grief I heard her words about forgiveness. I broke down and cried while we talked that day. Broke down and opened my heart to hear her words. My enemy, the universe had sent my enemy to help me learn to forgive. In those few moments as we talked that day, and as I broke down, I remembered just how deeply I had loved this person way back when, way back when we were still friends. Remembered as the flood gates of that rememberance spilled into my heart just how dearly I loved/love this person.

I said to her this afternoon "Could you tell I was hearing you? That I was really listening?". Yes. She could tell. It was apparent.

Now she is in pain... grieving deeply. I told her she had the tools now within her to help her through her tough time. Tools she never had before in her life. Tools she could utilize to work through what she is going through at the moment. If she could reach me, as painfilled and angry as I was at her, she could help herself get through this tough time. And you never know what the future really is in the end. Perhaps her situation can be healed in some way.

Have I learned the forgiveness I asked the universe to send me a lesson on yet? I am working on it now. Processing. Working. Trying to heal, waiting for that final feeling of real release from the pain. The anger is gone, but the pain is still there. I am not quite there, but I am light years closer than I was a week ago.

I grieve for all that has happened in the last year. I grieve for all the pain and anger and loss of friendships that happened. Processing, working toward an ultimate healing, an ultimate forever lesson, learned for all time. I do not want to ever have to go through any of this again with anyone for any reason. I want this lesson learned. I want my lesson to have been learned for my higher good, for the higher good of all. Whatever I finally learn, I want to be able to use it forever in this lifetime and all others to come.

That is where I am in the process of learning forgiveness right now. Moving forward slowly, but at least no longer stuck.

 

Dear Edgie,

Yes indeed, forgiving myself has become the quest in my heart. I am just not so sure what I really need to forgive myself for. Like, there is so much I could come up with while roving around making a fearless moral inventory. I could come up with half a dozen items off the top of my head that I need to apologise to myself for and then makes amends to me for.

On the other hand, I can come up with at least a half dozen or more things I have done this last year or so that has been to be really good to me and further me in my path of growth. Which is why I wish I had someone else to talk all this out with. I will end up beating myself up and missing the good things I have done while attempting to work through all the things I need to make amends to myself over. I need a touchstone to sit with me and lovingly guide me through the self forgvieness process.

Unfortunately I only know shame based, guilt producing folk. You know, back home in LA, there were tons of support groups and 12 steps meetings you could go to when you needed to do some real inner work. There is nothing here. Absolutely nothing. So you have to figure out how to work your shit alone, without someone to tell you you may or may not be heading down a path that will take your recovery and healing into a direction that is nonproductive for you.

I am looking for unconditional love. Something that is in serious short supply in my life right now. Even within my own being. Which is why I seek out that which is a power greater than myself. At the moment, that si the only resource I have at my disposal to aid in my healing.

So that is where I am, seeking out through meditation the help only a higher power can bring.

Divine intervention.

I have been reading as much as I can find on the internet about forgiveness after betrayal. Most of what you find out there is about marital infidelity, which in my case is not the actual situation I find myself having to heal from.  It's interesting that I can easily forgive a sexual or emotional encounter outside of the relationship by a partner.

For whatever reason, I find sexual/emotional betrayal by a partner to be an easy thing to forgive and forget. Don't get me wrong here, I don't particularly want my partner going out and having an affair or whatever. However, since I can remember, at least since I was a young adult, I never felt like having a sexual encounter or even a minor affair was something I could not let go and forgive as long as the relationship was solid otherwise. I also have never felt like I owned someone else to the point that should they want to have an encounter outside of the relationship that I had some God given right to be severely offended. So forgiveness in that instance was easy enough for me to produce.

What I have never been able to let go of and forgive is betrayal of a deeper and more spirit killing kind. It doesn't matter if it is your life partner, your brother or your best friend, what matters is the depth of the relationship and the trust you had in that person. The greater the trust and bond between you, the greater the wounding from the betrayal.

If you have a close personal bonded relationship with someone, then when they consciously or even unconsciously conceive a plot to betray you and then carry that plot out, once it's found out, it is like murder to your heart. That kind of betrayal literally murders part of your spirit. It creates a wounding so deep and powerful that it feels as if part of your being was murdered.

And in many ways it was murdered. The betrayer literally murdered the relationship as it once was by their words and actions. Because the bond of your two spirits was so deep and the trust so utter, once the actions are set forth by the betrayer to destroy the relationship, something is set in action in the spirit that literally kills that part of you which was the relationship. The relationship being an actual part of your being, your spirit. It was a part of your real essence. That may have actually been their intentions in the first place, to kill or sever the bond in the spirit, however the way they went about killing the relationship and bond is the part that becomes so spirit murdering, so utterly devastating to the betrayed party.

I had a very dear friend once who betrayed my trust utterly. Her betrayal was enough that I cut her off and out of my life. At that time in my life, I was attempting to learn about forgiveness. I assumed that her betrayal was sent to me to learn forgiveness. I was however unable to forgive her, mainly because her betrayal hurt more than just me. But the real truth was, deep down inside, I was just unable to let go of what she had done and forgive.

Nearly two years after she betrayed me, she contacted me and asked if she could talk with me. Something inside of me told me to go ahead and let her talk to me, say whatever it was she had to say. Everything I felt for her had become just a resigned anger. When I thought of her at that point in time, I only felt minor contempt and brushed her off in my head as if she was someone I had made a serious judgment error in trusting in the first place.

So as I let her speak, I felt simply mistrust and stood at a distance emotionally as she began to talk with me. The first words out of her mouth where about how she knew she had done me wrong and that she did not expect to be forgiven, however she still needed to take responsibility for her actions and admit her wrong to me and make her amends. I don't know what happened to me in that moment, but something in my spirit broke open like a flood gate and my heart opened to her and forgiveness poured out from every ounce of my being.

I don't know how that happened, I don't know what happened, but somehow this feeling of love and forgiveness just overwhelmed me completely. I began to weep openly. I couldn't contain it even if I had wanted to. I however, didn't want to contain it, I needed it to pour out of me and wash me clean. And it did. In that moment, as I forgave her in my heart and told her I forgave her, a burden was lifted off my spirit and freed me from the chains I wore because of her betrayal and my inability to forgive her.

I know this person's illness, I know much about her pathos, and so although I was able to forgive her, I chose to not allow her to be close to me for now. She also lives 1500 miles away from me, so she is not someone who is presented to me in my life very often. It's easy to not have contact with her as she grows onward, healing from that which makes her harm herself and others. For me it's self preservation. I know how ill she truly is, I knew it before I ever allowed her into my life initially. I chose initially to allow this person a chance to start anew with our new friendship and she did to me what she had done to so many others. Now, I choose to allow her to grow on in life without me there in her life. I don't ignore her, she is just not a part of my life at this time.

That was my first ever lesson in forgiveness. Many minor things have come and gone out of my life since that time that I have been able to forgive. Until this last year, I have been able to look into someone's heart and forgive when someone has done a minor transgression against me.

The forgiveness I grapple with now is not one I have ever encountered before in my life. This is the spirit killing kind of betrayal as I have never had to deal with before. I have been stuck with the pain and anger of this wounding now for many, many months. Part of my problem that makes it so difficult to work through this issue is that I love this person deeply and utterly, and I gave that person my utter and complete trust and they betrayed it utterly and completely. This person to me had become a brother to me, someone I trusted with all of my being, all of my spirit. So when I found out the exact nature of her betrayal and exactly what she had done to betray me, I was devastated to the core of my being.

When I presented her betrayal to me, she denied having done what she had done. Denied it all and told me she had never said those things to people about me. If I had not gotten the information from three different sources, I might have believed her, might have let it slide, might have allowed her back in, but in that moment, I knew she wasn't able to face what she had done to me and so was lying not only to me, but also to herself. I knew her well enough to know that her main sickness was being a pathological liar and inher pathology, she made up lies to herself to be able to do the things she did to people and still live with her actions and go on with life. I, of course, was not the first person she had done something like this to, I was just the last one at the moment.

But in that moment, as she denied everything to me and made up lies to me about what she might or might not have actually said to other people about me, I realized that I had lost her until the day she was able to be real with herself about all the things she had done with people in her life.  I knew my brother was dead and so was the spirit bond between us. She had murdered it, whether consciously or not. It was dead and my heart was broken beyond words.

So I have not held out for her to come someday and ask to be forgiven, I know how deep her illness is to know that a simple miracle is not going to come along and heal a lifetime of betraying others. And I have just lived with the pain in my spirit, sometimes angry, sometimes grieving deeply, but never healing.

I look at what she has done to me and I see how deep the betrayal really was and is, I see how she allowed others to enter in and try to ruin me also. I see all that she did clearly and know that to this day I still live with the repercussions of her actions. And all I feel is the grief, the pain, the wounding, because, in the end, I still love this person without end. Cannot stop loving her as my brother despite all she did to me. In my heart, she is still bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She is still my family who betrayed me utter to the end in order to fill her own wants and desires. Used me like toilet paper, necessary to get the job at hand done and over with. Ready to move on to the next step in her plans for life. She had gotten all the use she could out of me at the moment.

She will never come to me like my other friend to seek out forgiveness. She is incapable of doing that, and I am pretty sure she will be for many years to come. In the meantime I am bleeding out from the wounding she inflicted and unable to heal myself and go on with life. I am stuck in this state of deep grief. How do you forgive someone who cannot even admit to themselves what they have done to anyone else let alone you?

Do you forgive them because they are so sick? I don't know, I just don't know.

I don't want this person in my life when they are so sick. I know the exact nature of their illness and know so very well what they are capable of doing again and again, to anyone who gets close enough to them. To anyone they believe can help them get ahead in life. How do you forgive someone, anyone who not only denies what they have done but would do it again in a heart beat given the opportunity?

I am so lost in this, so unable to process any further. She is around my life whether I want her to be or not. And her being around only inflicts the wounds deeper and more painfully. Knowing she is thinking she is in the right and is the righteous one, knowing she has made herself out to be the one who is injured because I will not allow her in my life. But I can't let her in, she is too sick and I cannot validate her lies and betrayals, will not do it for my own sake.

Should I? Should I just let her lies and betrayals go, allow her back in, forgive her and let everyone around believe that her lies about me were truth? That I am the monster she made me out to be to others? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to over come all this? This is why I am stuck in this perpetual state of grief, there seems no way out of this short of divine intervention.

So I process, this is me processing. Trying to find that place of healing, trying to find the divine intervention. If not for me, at least for her. Heal her, make her whole, allow her to grow to be the being she really is, the loving and giving spirit that is part of universal god love, just as I am.

Processing onward. Processing, trying to heal.