FORGIVENESS

Lets Face it, we are not all the same.  Not for the lack of opportunity within our societies, but because we are all subject to Nurture.  Yes what you have stumbled upon is a Blog belonging to a chick of a shrink.  I have taken Psychology and even have a degree in it and a few years of clinical experience.  Yet, have decided for my own wellbeing and what I know about the field have declined to become licensed to treat in a private practice.  It’s all too indoctrinated even at such a young age in the progression of our social welfare states.  My point being that we are all so different and depending on our diagnosis have only a few choices for treatment. 

     Now where this is going I will not get to quickly so pay attention.  The photo above proves my argument that we as individuals cannot control the environment we are born in to, the ideas these people who are our nurturers have, nor the world that dictates how they behave. 

     Being bound and then tied to a radiator certainly would mess me up!  I presumably had a decent and fairly normal upbringing. My parents worked and we ate 3 meals a day and we even had Christmas and went on holidays.  My father and then my 2 stepfathers had a tendency to be drunkards one of them beating on my brother and myself .  Due to the consumption of too much alcohol, this substance consumed to excess causes people to behave differently than they normally would and often to the detriment of themselves and others. No one in my family drinks much my brother and I have a beer once in a while and I like to think I am a wine connoisseur and keep a few bottles of my favorites for special occasions.  No one gets drunk and no one entertains that way either. Most celebrations my mother will bring out the neer (or nearly beer) beer and my brother and I may slip out to the deck to enjoy a cold one.  Drunkenness to my family has become a sacrilege.  As an adult I had to realize that the Bible warns about being a drunkard and I had to accept that this was a way someone close to me managed a problem they had with alcohol. 

     We all sort of evolve to understand ourselves and the ways we relate to others in the world.  We adopt terminologies to describe ourselves such as introvert and extrovert, A Type and sanguine and so on. 

     My mother doesn’t remember me as a child and I surmise this is because I was the oldest and parenting with the oldest is vague in most parents as we are their trial run.  Most adapt per child and do or do not do what they did or did not do to those of us who had the privilege to be born first. 

I often see who I was, duplicated in my granddaughter, who is apparently very reminiscent of me. Amazingly not only in looks but actions. I do pity my mother and give her complete respect for not putting me up for adoption now that I have been enlightened.   Given whom she is and whom that little person was. 

My daughter is not fazed by the behaviors as she just keeps the girl busy.  Easy solution for her but obviously not in a home where children were not the focus and were expected to be well mannered and dutiful. 

I watch as mini-me careens off her bicycle to a pair of roller blades, hugs the dog as she passes almost ripping off his ear, then bypasses  the hole her father has dug in the yard for maintenance reasons, by jumping over it! On her way to the trampoline to frolic all with roller blades on! My son in law hardly notices. 

     The whole purpose and point of this writing is to move forward towards the subject of forgiveness.  I once had a pastor that related in a sermon, about when he was a child, would hide in his tree house. He would watch people for hours from this vantage point.

 I first thought how boyish climbing and playing in trees.  Then I thought how perhaps creepy, all the watching.  However, given who I thought he was and what kind of an upbringing he had we assume that kind of behavior was probably harmless.  Yet, again Ted Bundy also appeared to have normal childhood experiences until later when he began killing the animals he had once treated with kindness.  What is normal and what is not? What causes that switch to be flicked that makes someone display behaviors that are unacceptable within our norms of society?  We have determine that what goes on behind closed doors influences those kinds of choices and behaviors. The things we cannot see.  Yet, as a society we deal with the results.    

In psychology we study the reasons why people act out in antisocial ways. The unit is called Abnormal Personality Behaviors.  We really do not delve deeply into criminal behaviors all that much but cover it from the aspect of healthy family and societal interactions.  Many people are amazed by those that become predators and rape children and murder their mothers.   One psychologist called it the “Rogue Pod Member Syndrome” based on studies into rogue male Orcas, (killer whales that band together and form their own pods.) They begin to kill not only the females they would normally breed with, and  decimate seal populations brutally murdering them for fun.  This behavior causes them to be rejected from their pods which are family units established for life. Currently these studies are looking at the possibilities that these male Orcas behaviors are relatable to human male behaviors within our society. 

     I don't ask deep psychological questions about criminals because I its evil. That is what evil looks like that is how evil behaves.   Our prisons are full of people on Death Row that are evil.  Yet those that study the mind and the behaviors that ensue out of it are not in agreement to the reasoning’s behind such abnormal behaviors. Many dollars are spent on trying to see how the synapses in the brain fire and why some fire this way and others do not.  It’s all conjecture.  However, most of us do agree it has something to do with nature and nurture.  How we as individuals are taught to perceive the environment we live in, based on what we are taught by our nurturers. The age-old adage abounds in the world of psychology and actually is one of the first concepts we study, Nature VS Nurture.

 On one occasion I transported my sons friend home from a sleep over party, only to hear his plight about his mother when he did not want to get out of the car.  I was anxious to have him gone as in the little time he was with us, he ate us out of house and home, and peed the bed.  He begged me not to leave him. 

I asked where his mom or dad were as we sat in the car looking at his apartment concealed between a row of trees. He explained that his mother had cancer and had gotten this place to leave them. “Them” being his 2 other brothers and 3 little sisters one of which was pawing at his window of the car that very moment.  I watched as an older boy stumbled out of the apartment and peed on a tree. His counterpart in our car said,” he’s drunk.” Amazing to me as he could not have been more than 14.    I said, where is your mom?” he told me she was at her boyfriend’s house taking care of HE and HIS family.  I began to get the picture.  It all appeared to be true, the urchin like children, the appetite and the peeing the bed, the obviously drunken sibling, no supervision.  What was I to do?  I was not a social worker although, I was sure that at some point a social worker would become involved.   I got out  and escorted the children to the door. No adult was present.   I would like to say I took them all with me.  But I did not. I did call called Child Protective Services and comforted myself in knowing that one cannot simply take someone’s children.

What did ensue was the young man making a regular visit to our home, with an occasional sibling, and me feeding them.  Once in a while I got a call from the mother who always asked for the son first ignoring me, or in the third person asked me to relay a message to her “fcking stupid son.”

Finally,we moved out of the area and my son attended another school. But it doesn’t end there.  I met a bus driver who had been beaten by a student she was transporting. The state had the case and was prosecuting the boy on her behalf. It was this boy. I recognized his name.

 I never heard what resulted however, I was sure that he was on the road to incarceration, thus being a loss for our society. Had he had good parenting, been nurtured and allowed to blossom we can only speculate his successes in life. 

     Which leads me to the reason for this entry.  Forgiveness;

     I have a set of Bible verses in a decorative box next to my bed and when I arise I take one out and read it.  Over this last week there has been a theme running in my life.  I was led to read in St. Mark 11: 25, “and when ye stand praying forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” This brought to mind 2 former friend’s of mine. One friend I had reason to disassociate with after many years of friendship due to her insensitivity and continual reminders of how little our friendship meant to her. The other an actual stalker I had learnt firsthand  from about abnormal personality disorders.   

The former I had been hurt by again and again often adjusting my life and sensibilities to reconcile with her.  Even when I perceived her as actually being mentally ill I kept lines of communication open with her. I believed that she had been terrorized and harassed into unrealities during a former job and place of residence.  She displayed paranoia’s and instability I recognized as being part of a psychotic disorder of some sort.  Upon denial of a statement she had made and that statement being so benign in nature yet, so adamantly protested by her I realized she was not herself or the person I had thought she was.  I was hurt.  I allowed the relationship end.  I forgot her but had not forgiven her.    

Realizing that someone close to you does not respect or cherish you or your friendship is disappointing.  She was not the person I had thought all this time she was.    

Yet who am I? How should I behave?  Should I be Someone who is comforting and kind and not just someone adding up wrongs and hurts of my own.  Just because I step up to the plate in life and she doesn’t, should it mean she is less and I am more?  No not necessarily I told myself, it simply means we are different.  What does it matter if she doesn’t live up to my expectations for her?  Why should I have any expectations at all? And whose eyes am I seeing through? My parents?  My psychological training?

Why not those of Jesus Christ?  I began to see that in the end nothing matters but how we behave. What matters is the behaviors that Christ modeled for us.  What WOULD Jesus Do?  Forgive her for being insensitive and hurting me? Forgive her for seeing me as who she thought I was or used to be prior to maturity and growth?   But also forgive her for not seeing that person I had become.

     It is human to see others in the finite on a single plain. Why do people need to conjecture past understanding others?  Why do people involve themselves in the lives of others and they have not even been invited?   For example, People at my job used to take their sick days to go to the doctor and run errands. They are earned days that if not used can be cashed out or carried forward.  The union does not determine how the days will be utilized.  They do not stipulate how the days need to be spent.   That’s an individual members own decision. The contracts assume that people are capable of making their own decisions. Yet, one time I took a sick day to take my son to the doctor and I ran into my supervisor at a neighborhood electronics store that was closing. He acted like he had caught me doing something wrong. He even asked me to prove that I had just come from the doctor with my child. I did, however, in my mind that’s was overstepping.  It was wrong of him to follow and confront me at the store.   It infringed upon my feelings of safety and privacy. His actions implied to me that rather than observing the rules set out by the union he would try to enforce his own interpretations of the rules upon me.   

     Some people might say that’s ok as it is a job and that is a supervisor. Yet, what is being observed there is singular thinking  denoted by one level plain of consideration.  My supervisor was not able to think past his ideas of what is right and wrong and did not consider me as an individual with rights able to make my own decisions.  Most people in our society do not have such thoughts and also cannot ascend thoughtfully. They just continue to assume about others and make judgements and create gossip. Loving kindness and thoughtful awareness allows us to give people the benefit of the doubt. 

I learned to practice this in deed as I consider others. This benefits not only my own peace of mind but others that I contend with in life. 

     The other friend was forced upon me. The relationship was not of my choosing.  My warning lights going off constantly to the words spoken and the kind soy behaviors I witnessed  The first time I had entered this woman’s home I knew something was wrong with her.  Food overflowed out of every nook and cranny. Boxes of rice piled under the kitchen table that looked as if everyone in her family had used them for foot rests. Under the children’s beds and in the bathrooms, first in available cupboards and then all around the rooms were stacked cans of various  foods.   The cupboards being so full they could not be closed. My surprise was probably written al over my face as she felt it necessary to explain herself.    Apparently she had known hunger as a child and never wanted her children to experience this.  Understandable right? 

Yet, as this friendship progressed more one sided than not, my sense of duty to the church family and my Christianity overshadowed my sensibilities.  After a while and some unusual events the relationship went   sour after she accused my husband, a mild man, of having shouted at her husband over their small group ministry issues. It was laughable to me as her accusations were preposterous as my husband would never say such things, it was completely fabricated.  It never happened.  Yet,  instead of backing off of us and letting it alone or making amends they continued full steam with more bizarre accusations until the group actually fell apart. Most of the members choosing not to attend  due to the lack of desire to experience the strange drama.  We left the church and actually began the group anew in another location without that couple and the already confused church leadership who kept trying to band us together.  

     Then years later after I had moved  to another part of the State, the whole saga forgotten, I was shopping in Wal-Mart.  This very same woman appeared and began to speak to me as if nothing had occurred   She gave me her number , what?  Seriously….As if I would be calling. 

Sadly her understanding of the events of the past were unlike mine.  I made a totally healthy decision and threw the number in the trash.   

    

     Fast-forward many more years.  I am a professional school bus driver while attending university. While parked at a school loading my kids this very woman gets on my bus! Again!  WOW! I had moved and taken a job over 300 miles away from both of our former neighborhoods.   I was in complete shock.  I made small talk and told her, “This is what I do.”  She smiled and left. Bewildered,  I consulted my faith to inquire how it was that this hell seems to be repeating itself again.    I never saw her again.  It was if she vanished.  I have since graduated and moved 4,000 miles away.  However, as I consider forgiveness I ask myself what in my heart have I harbored against another that might make me bound to bitterness? 
Considering these two people, Have I really forgiven them? What do I forgive them  for?  being abnormal or for being sick and remaining untreated in our ideological live and let live society?  For lying about me?  For chasing me around and harassing me?  Yes, all of the above. 

What I needed to learn is that forgiving is as much about helping myself as being righteous in Gods eyes. Those 2 people may not ever have a revelation or epiphany about me and what happened between us.  

Chances are they will behave towards others as they have towards me.   I have since learned that some personality disorders are not treatable even if the persons affected become aware that they are not well. 

However: Jesus Christ healed the sick and made the lame to walk and the blind to see.  We can see Christ’s example demonstrated by  his emissary Pope Francis’s as he embraces the horribly deformed and crippled to pray for them.  Is mental illness not the same thing?  Just because mental illness is not always visible is it not just as debilitating? WWJD? He would show mercy and forgive them. They do not know what they do.    “and when ye stand praying forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” St. Mark 11: 25 Amen

When living in South Florida during the summer season one encounters storm events on an almost daily basis. Weekly, I do the wash and then hang it out on the line to dry. There are loads of dos and don’ts associated with this drying technique such as, the sun will bake the clothing, the water is soft so it makes it hard to get anything clean. But I won’t bore you with the details. I refer to my weather application daily and always see the symbol for a storm. I think that is reported, as they know it will at some point in the day storm, That way if it doesn’t they would only be wrong occasionally.


One day I saw the AP change the prediction from rain to sunshine and back to rain again. I was glad for that knowing at least someone is paying attention. This Morning I loaded the lines with laundry and was dismayed to see the ominous black to the West. More black than usual I set about removing the still wet laundry from the lines. In the meantime I also carried in the lawn furniture and poured myself a cup of coffee and as the thunder began to roll and it does roll (like God bowling) to sit on the couch with the dogs that were by now beginning to shake and look for me for security. I opened the drapes to view the bird preserve across from us. to see the palms, swaying in the wind. The lightening strikes were spectacular as the storm moved over the house and went on to the East. It’s amazing to hear the rumbles over the house as they shake everything, each dog pressing into me and panting in nervousness. I say, “its ok be still” and so on in attempts to sooth the animals. I try to imagine what it must be like not to understand the great booming noises. I also wonder if they can see the strikes of the lightning? Sometimes it will rumble all day and not even get dark and like today the storm moved off after a tremendous show with very little rain. So…I will have to water tonight. When I moved here I went a little wild with the plantings. I am in love with palm trees. There are so many varieties. I was able to get a few smaller generic palms on my budget and plant them around. They need a lot of water and fertilizer or their under leaves turn brown and die. I found a recipe for a homemade brew fertilizer that everyone swears by, which includes a can of beer. What is it with the beer? It makes everything better? It sure works here in Florida as often people are working in stifling heat. People are either drinking it or watering things with it including their food. Beer chicken. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/beer-can-chicken-recipe.html






Doing anything physical here has been a real challenge for this Yankee. I used to make fun of people who lived their lives indoors. From the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car, to the air-conditioned store and so on, but whoa! I understand completely now. I understand how a person can just be sitting not even doing anything and break out in total perspiration. Everyone who has any money or is smart leaves for this season. Many homes sit empty. The people who leave are called snowbirds. However, you do not have to go far to escape the heat, and they come back before the snow fly’s anyway. I have begun to long for my old 4 seasons life. I also have been practicing with the air conditioning: 76 and 77 is too hot and 72 is too cold. I have not reached a middle range yet. Pajamas were flannel bottoms and a T now I am down to the T without the flannels. My mum sleeps in the buff.


I usually retire with a washcloth on my head and sometimes also on my neck. I like to tell this to my daughter as she always asked me earlier when she was growing up why do you buy washcloths? I would review my hygiene lessons to her and then threw in the cloth on the head and neck thing, which left her oddly confused. It was only recently did I realize I had been doing this because I was from Florida originally and developed such habits early on. Also, why I have always slept with on leg out of the covers and why I cannot stand a pile of blankets on me, Florida is the reason.


I ran across a picture of me when I was about 8 all sacked out with my little chintz animal pattern jams with my one leg hanging out of the sheet, just to the right of the air conditioner, a washcloth on my head. We were living in Florida.


But to make a long story short and I will skip the part about me ditching school for the first time here by stepping back into the palms as the bus arrived. (A habit that followed me all my life)….


And skip to the part where I am singing. “The National Anthem, Oh tis of thee, and America the Beautiful, plus: “ The “Florida State” song. It’s about waking up in the morning where the orange blossoms grow, and a drifting back to Florida the orange blossom state.” Then leaning forward to spit on the boy in front of me in the choir line (?). A childhood filled with riding my bicycle with no hands against traffic on cool fall mornings, walking barefooted to the 7-11 for an icy and a small penny bag of candy, hopping from grass patch to white pavement to grass patch. Races in the street with my pigeon-toed friend, by the way, who was faster than me even with her feet turned inwards. We would run and jump into swimming pools throughout the neighborhood as Marco Polo extended itself from pool to pool. Each day ended with a sundown session of the garage band, with me on tennis racquet singing, “Hey, Hey with the Monkees.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzzx6lKBpHQ






My Florida childhood spent playing, was also the Florida of my mom’s discontent. She lay on the beach day in and day out for a long time. I do not remember going to school at all. Just body surfing and eating in beachside shrimp shacks. Finally, my grandmother came to live with us and I went to a counselor to make leather wallets with braided plastic on the ends, and twisted key chains. Not that anything strange was wrong with me, just a kid that had lost her daddy and was subjected to being a beach bum. Apparently, I had drawn some pretty awful pictures showing caskets and black flowers. Causing my mother and grandmother dismay.


Mom cried a lot missing my dad who had been mutilated in a terrible car crash back in our home state. She had buried him, sold everything and moved us to Florida. I had learned to care for my little brother making him fried egg sandwiches, (imagine that using a frying pan at 6,) and teaching him to swim. My grandmother, she cooked and created order and routine. She made creamed chicken on toast with bore those little red things called gizzards and other floaty parts, which I picked out, yuck! (That generation ate everything due to the depression, which caused them to be very frugal. Or so I have been told.)


I had the mumps and she made creamed chicken. I smelled it from my bed and threw up as I imagined those floaty chicken parts all flowing around in the creamed pea sauce. To this day I can smell it. At night my very normal pencil sharpener became a bust of John F. Kennedy that gave speeches to me through the walls, however, it was only the TV in the living room speaking to me from the other side of the wall. Those were the days of high imagination, where the creature under the bed could reach out and grab your arms or legs so… I would jump in the dark into bed and never, never let my arms hang over.


Then one night I was awakened by a scream and jumped out of bed to meet my grandmother in the doorway of her room right across the hall, then seeing my mom and her boyfriend fighting on the sofa. I followed my grandmother’s lead to beat on him to get him off of her. We beat him right to the front door and out. Everyone screaming. He shoved me back and I hit the stacked stools by the door and they ripped at the wounds that had had formed on my knees by constantly falling off my bike.


I sat down bleeding and watched as my grandmother left me in charge rushing my mom to the hospital. He had tried to grind out her eyes with his thumbs!


He was a drunk, a condition at 8 I did not comprehend yet, and obviously my mother had chosen to overlook in her intimate relationship with this man. I did not know that at the time, but that was the beginning of the end. After her eyes got better, they were bandaged for what seemed like months as grandmother and I tended to her every need.


The phone rang and he was at the door all the time. My grandmother threatening to call the police. He would beg for forgiveness. I was not of an age to really ascertain the seriousness of the situation. We just packed boxes and a for sale sign went up on the house. Apparently, the house sold right away, and we moved West never to grace the Florida’s coastline again.


Yet, here we are. It’s so hot here I am wondering why?


Florida is obviously a poor state, they have a really low minimum wage I worked for 8 $ an hour in some of the most terrible conditions I have ever endured. It has taken me a week to recover from one week of slave labor in horrible heat. I saw so many violations that labor and industries would cringe where I am from. No breaks, working in unimaginable temperatures for long hours around dangerous machines. People drinking alcohol on their lunch breaks and even a shift boss leaving to go to the liquor store so he could drink on the night shift. Then these drunks get on forklifts. After the company showed we newbies a film depicting the dangers of forklifts, gory and horrific injuries recreated for us to watch. They send us out to work in the exact conditions that were depicted as Never Dos.


No floor supervisors or anyone making sure people are safe and the labor laws are upheld. Right away another employee told me that my own supervisor was drinking on the job! I suppose it is one of those, if I am doing it how can I reprimand someone else situations. I became acutely aware of where those forklifts were and who was on them! After one of the drivers placed a skid of papers right near me boxing me in so that when I turned around I gouged my leg on a sharp piece of the pallet and that same day falling down as I was exhausted from the heat and the long hours catching myself on a dangerous machine cutting a hole in my middle finger. And then another day a drunk man I was working with had been trying to show me how to stack came back from lunch smelling of alcohol, began to stack incorrectly blaming me in a stern voice. “Don’t you get it yet, this way and then that way!”? Then he jumps on the forklift yelling at a young black man working near us calling him a nigger and that if he got hurt he did not give a shit or maybe he said Fck.



I began to think about my now aching arm, which had been healed from a previous injury, and my knee, which I had damaged and had surgery back in the 90s now aching and keeping me sleepless at night. Not to mention my feet and aching back. Also, how my hands were swollen when I got up in the morning, and I could no longer close them completely. Combine that with inadequate working conditions, which allowed for the smell of the toner, (which I was supposed to get used to) permeate the premises’ and not be removed by the fans they supposedly sold.


After a rotten day of injuries I tried to report and when I tried to speak to my supervisor he waved me away saying, “not yet.” Hugh? Not yet?” How is that a way to speak to someone? I have worked for companies that would be sued by someone with injuries like mine so I got a Band-Aid and left. After another frustrating day of watching my line manager try to fix a machine over and over again, injuries, light-headedness from heat exhaustion and chemical smells, I quit.


I cannot imagine how I get myself into those kinds of jobs. I guess it is my willingness to try anything. Coming from a similar work environment I was surprised to see such negligence. They are a lawsuit and I mean a huge lawsuit waiting to happen. It’s a miracle no one has sued them as I am sure they deserve it with the turn over they have seen. I found a list of names on an old schedule from a year back and only one persons name was the same. Before I left I did some research for that very person to help her realize she should move on finds somewhere to work that would better appreciate her many skills and talents. Life doesn’t have to be so hard.






I have a good resume, lots of experience in human services, I am educated beyond most holding degrees in Journalism and Psychology. I am looking to work with a kinder gentler people. I need people in my life that care about others, are concerned about not only about the quality of their own lives but that of others too. I do not want to be around rough and tumble people anymore.


Years ago Showtime had a series called “Dead Like Me.” One of the characters was named George had a Job in a place that was called “Happy Time. “ She had a neurotic boss who had a heart of gold and loved her cat that she took on adventures with her.


George moved up quickly even with her negative sarcastic personality. Which I do not have, but seem to attract. Help!


So if you know of a place like this, a Happy Time that has an opening let me know I want to work there.



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Unfortunately, the series came to an end. It got weird, to much F this and F that and not enough real dialogue, (which Showtime has the tendency to do.) and some strange ad lib murder plot where the reapers kill their boss after the one they liked gained enough points to move forward to heaven. They lost Mandy Patinkin http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001597/their signature actor and it all went downhill from there.