hiddenmuse | (no subject)

Something happened a couple of weeks ago that I failed to mention:

Growing up, I'd had a lot of people at church that seemed to make their life's objective at the ages of 10 - 18 to make me feel shunned and like as much of an outcast as possible. You know, they succeeded. Between them and the people I went to school with, I had hardly any friends, and I felt like a total outcast.

Unfortunately, I carried that with me for years. I held a grudge against them all this time. I let their ignorance and desires to fit in themselves to completely rule my existence and completely taint my opinion of shared religious beliefs. This, in turn, had me turning against religion - rather than the culture.

Only recently have I realized that truthfully, they were just like me. They were trying to find where they fit into the scheme of things, and sometimes this meant that they'd look down upon others because they assumed that it was expected of them to do so. Eventually they moved on and away from those cliques, and in some instances had their own share of personal problems - divorce, mental illness, etc.

When I'd hear of their problems, I didn't run around gloating, thinking "assholes! you get what you deserve!". Instead, I had a sense of empathy for them in their situations. I mourned with them over the loss of newborn babies. Understood their pain upon hearing of someone being diagnosed with depression. Wanted to hug them and say "you know, you're not alone" when hearing of their leaving abusive husbands.

But, while I could do this, I couldn't do the most important thing. Forgive them for what they'd done to me in the past. That only happened very recently, when I realized that they were hiding their weakness and falliability behind the shield of bravado and swagger. Putting others down because they didn't understand them and their life situations, and at that point in their lives, it was just easier to mock and insult, rather than attempt to understand.

It's probably one of the hardest things for me to do, but I can forgive them for being the way they were towards me. They probably didn't know any different and were just acting on immediate reaction to someone coming along and completely upending their idyllic views of the world with another's reality.

I may never be friends with these people - and that's fine. No one said that you had to be friends with everyone. I just want to free my mind of that archaic mindset it was in for so long. I don't expect them to apologize to me - hell, they probably aren't even aware of what they'd done at the time, and I refuse to stir up a hornet's nest with those people.