I’m not certain that I will ever understand betrayal. I have been trying to understand it much of my life, but it may take me many more trips around the sun to fully grasp and comprehend that which causes one heart to betray another.
I have spent nearly a decade not writing, not speaking, almost to the point of becoming mute, for the sake of not wanting to betray what can only be described as the remnants of love. Broken remnants.
Remnants can become very powerful infusions when they are all you are left with. I have held them tenderly. Carefully. Consciously.
From something broken... Moses came and stood with words which he could not betray.
For there to be a betrayal, there implies that a small system has been living within rules which must be agreed upon. As soon as one person no longer agrees upon those rules, another within that system feels betrayed.
But this is why we need others. We may feel justified in leaving our pack, it may be the healthiest of all decisions, in fact. We need others in order to ground ourselves in a moral compass which extends beyond ourselves, not set by rules which have been imposed upon us. We need this to feel held and seen, in order to come back to our wholeness.
I have been thinking about my karma and how difficult it has been. How truly difficult. Wondering about its laws. Wondering wondering. Some might say that we cannot change our karma. That it was set long long ago and that’s that. Perhaps that is so. But I am beginning to think that I can change the beliefs which were passed onto me which I have held for far too long about myself. All those beliefs have done is harm me. By believing them, I have re-enacted my life the precise way that it was enacted before. And therefore, hurt myself.
Perhaps the only way that we can heal a life is to not repeat a pattern.
I think the only way to do that is to change what we think. An ongoing refinement of catching your thoughts and re-patterning them. Undoing and re-patterning the circuitry. Again and again and again and again. Day after day, hour by hour, moment by moment. For as long as it takes.
There is a scene in the film “On Golden Pond,” when Jane Fonda (Chelsea) says, “I have been answering to Norman all my life. Makes me so mad even when I’m 3000 miles away and I don’t even see him. I’m still answering to him” And Katharine Hepburn (Ethel) responds, “Don’t you think that everyone looks back on their childhood with a certain amount of bitterness and regret about something? You’re a big girl now. Aren’t your tired of it all? Bore bore bore. It doesn’t have to ruin your life, darling. Life marches by, Chels. I suggest you get on with it.”
I relate to this scene because I have been responding to being abandoned most of my life by re-enacting it. Drawing relationships towards me which have ended in painful abandonments and painful leave-takings again and again. I have done this because the wound of being abandoned has not completely healed.
I thought that it had. I really did. But I figured something new about myself recently. I have wanted acknowledgement around the most painful and wounding leave-taking. And the reality is, I will never receive what I desire. I have held out for this acknowledgement as the medicine to my broken parts. But that medicine is no longer on back order. It is no longer being distributed. It no longer exists. And I must learn to stop looking for that medicine.
Acknowledgement can, indeed, heal our hearts. Being adults and taking responsibility can be such powerful medicine. But seeking that very medicine, can be so destructive if tied to moving forward in one’s healing process. Seeking an external result as the answer to one’s problem is never the answer.
All we can do is be responsible for our own part and send each other back to sort out what our individual work is to do. It is not my role to tell you that it is your job to apologize to me. You may never care to do so. You may never understand the reason for it. Even if an entire village, who becomes my moral compass, agrees that an apology may be a sane and wise and righteous response, attaching to that desire becomes destructive. I have lived in that destruction and I must stop answering to it.
Perhaps the only way that we can heal a life is to not repeat a pattern.
That is the medicine I am working with now. Consciously, valiantly, and compassionately. No matter how long it takes.
As Anthony Robbins said, “Your biography is not your destiny. Your decisions are.”
May we all stay awake in our decisions and find our way back to love and healing.
6.18.13.
Jill Bacharach
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