The "F" Word

Forgiveness is a bitch.

I’m all about humble pie, don't get me wrong, I just tend to take on responsibility for other people's stuff, which is probably why performers loved me so much backstage in my previous profession...It was always easy to do, because there was always someone there to tell me that it wasn't my fault. I had a little bit of martyr syndrome which has been one of the quickest roads to popularity for me in years/decades past.

I've only had one experience where someone was there reassuring me that it WAS all my fault, that I couldn't make a good decision to save my life and that everyone was miserable because of it. Someone besides my own ego, I mean.

Just yesterday I asked this same former co-worker for forgiveness for a really ugly project we worked on a few years back. She was the absolute bane of my existence in every way. I was in a position of authority, running an extremely challenging tour. Having done one the previous year I knew that it would be a white-knuckle ride, but if history served I would come out a war-hero.
This turned into a battlefield of a different sort. Rachel and I (not her real name, but I can’t just call her “that one girl”) were on each other’s list from the moment we practice-loaded the truck, and it just went downhill from there. At points on the tour there was near-mutiny, back-stabbing, you name it. I think the high-point was me running the truck with all the scenery in it into the turnaround of a Kingdom Hall on the way to a performance, Rachel in the passenger seat. Can you say adrenal-fatigue?

Honestly I don’t know how I made it through. All the major decisions were mine and they kept everyone miserable for about 4 months straight. Rachel made sure everyone knew what a terrible job I was doing every step of the way. She made constant phone calls to my superiors tattling on me for everything she felt should be done a different way. (Not that they concurred. Unfortunately I think she tattled herself out of a career with that company.)I couldn’t win. I was close to exhaustive collapse, my boss and backup was on maternity leave, and it seemed the tour would never end.

The tour did end, however. My boss had her twins on the final day of the tour, which I took much pleasure in announcing at our closing dinner. At least I got to share one small taste of joy with people I really wanted to love and whom I wanted to like me.
Her twins died a week and a half later, and I was utterly convinced, though we've never spoken since, that Rachel blamed me for that, too.

Years have passed, and everyone in that artistic community knows all about that tour as a nightmare of Wagnerian proportions.

However, as I went through my yoga practice yesterday for the first time in several weeks, I sat in my pose of “supported bridge” for just a minute or two before I realized that I HAVE TO ASK RACHEL’S FORGIVENESS TODAY.

As much grief as she caused me, and as horrid as she could be, I know I caused her grief in equal measure, intentionally or not. I have never wished her ill, either now or then, and knowing that I had caused her any frustration or rage or anxiety is something my system just could not tolerate anymore.

After I had completed my practice I went down to the computer and found her on Facebook (good ol’ Facebook) and wrote her a letter, asking for her to forgive me for any grief I could possibly have caused her. I named a couple of instances. I told her that I now understand that we are 100% responsible for our own experiences, and that I had humbly forgiven her for anything I had held against her at the time. I told her I know she hated me, but that I held no negative emotion for her, only an apology. I told her that I know that everyone is always doing their best with the tools they have available at the time, and while I know I was doing my best then, I know I had done wrong by her and that I am heartily sorry for it. I may have sounded condescending, but I meant it with every fiber of my being.

I sobbed for quite a while after I had sent it. I don’t think I’d understood how much I needed this forgiveness – needed to ask anyway.

As the day wore on, more and more horrors of the tour surfaced for me. All the decisions I had made or been asked to make: My utter incapacity to please everyone at all times, the looks of disappointment and disgust when I insisted on maintaining our schedule, despite the discomfort it caused all around. The impossibilities I had been asked to resolve and the shame I felt for not being able to find satisfactory resolution.

One by one the judgments flashed before me. I could see the disaster left in my wake. I could see how ill-suited I was to manage the situation and what I fraud I was to claim that I could. I watched myself make excuses for my poor choices, my months-long illness I endured at that time, which rendered me fearful and unable to eat out while on the road. The 3-4 hours of sleep every night. The hotel reservation cancelled because my employer forgot to pay the credit card bill. I was still shouldering it all.

Through it all I could see all the poor choices I had made out of fear, or hadn’t been able to make at all, based on the same. I even felt responsible for killing the twins, as it was the one good news I believed I had shared with my touring companions, which then ended in tragedy after all.

At that point it was obvious that I didn’t really need Rachel’s forgiveness, but my own. It seemed to me that if only I could have her forgiveness then I would somehow be absolved. But really, there’s no free pass there.

Forgiving oneself is often way, way harder than asking someone else to do it.

In fact, we are all perfect in God’s eyes. We are carbon-bound versions of our Creator who do stuff and learn stuff. So acknowledging that we are the ones we need forgiveness from can only bring into focus the fact that we, not God, are the ones who judge. I am the only one who can let me down. I am the only one who can create unhealthy expectations of myself and then accuse and punish myself when I don’t meet these self-imposed criteria. God doesn’t actually have any criteria, just love and assistance. He doesn’t even judge us for judging.

I think, at this point, we may just be afraid of our own power. If we really loved ourselves, and if we really loved one-another, we’d know we are utterly Divine. We are powerful in our perfection, and that’s a whole lot of responsibility.

Right now I’m feeling fairly proud of myself for finally disembarking on this leg of my journey of self-acceptance. I’m still working on experiencing all the self-hatred I’ve been so afraid of for the past few years in order to let it go. To experience deep gratitude for the lesson, bless it, and let it go. Like anything, it goes in layers, but I feel a little bit lighter, a little bit freer, and a little more peace is creeping in.

Rachel just held up a mirror to my own self-loathing, and wouldn’t let me look away, and that isn’t an easy thing to do. My God, what an angel she is for that. What a gift.

She hasn’t written back, and I don’t expect she will. I don’t need her to anymore. I know she and I chose to learn these lessons from each-other, and I’m so very grateful for that. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.