stream of consciousness

Forgiveness is hard.

Feelings are hard.

Dealing with very big, very heavy emotions is not an easy task.

How do you balance that very fine line of wanting to feel loved but also having to choke down your feelings of resentment and bitterness and rage?

How do you forgive someone for not meeting your needs, for not loving you in the ways you like to be loved, without cutting them out of your life?

How do you process and the anger and the grief while at the same time try to rebuild and repair the relationship that you so desperately want to save?

I've tried talking and it always leads to yelling.

So much yelling.

And crying. The kind of tears that sting the most because they're from emotions you've been holding onto and harboring forever.

The talking leads to the yelling, which leads to the fighting, which always ends in the crying.

Maybe I really am my father's daughter?

It all really comes down to flight or fight.

I always run. I have a propensity to run far, far away from my problems in the moment.

And now? Now, we're putting in the work. Fighting. Because this is something worth fighting to save.

Conflict has always left a pit in my stomach, like my feelings aren't valid because nobody ever taught me that they were.

How do we learn to live with dysfunction, within ourselves and within a family unit, in the aftermath of our tragedies and our trauma?

How do we learn to forgive the actions of others without compromising ourselves and our values in the process?

How do we process these big, heavy emotions and clear the air and get them out into the open without creating a conflict of Pandora's Box proportions?

I feel like I have all these very big questions and no definitive answers.