Difficult Journey

Hey y'all, I have been really going through and dealing with a lot of emotions while navigating this thing that people call forgiveness. I mean lets be completely real forgiving anyone is hard and I mean hard business but having to forgive yourself... OMG that's on another level of HARD! The level of HARD this journey has been is crazy because I have so much that I made myself face recently.

Facing myself, I have to be honest that recently I had to take a hard look at two very personal relationships that I have held close for some years. One of the people has gone on to glory and I am mourning in two different ways.. the person I thought she was in life before she left this Earth and the person she actually was that I have to forgive after she has left this Earth. I ask myself so many times did she really care anything about me the way she was able to turn on me so quickly with someone else I thought was my "Friend/sister" because in all honesty who does something like that? I have spent a year of my life going through different stages of hurt and anger, along with me feeling as though the behavior and treatment was deserved because I started to BELIEVE things said about me even if I know that is a LIE. 

Sometimes as people we will buy into other people's feelings and thoughts of us even when we know for a fact that is not who we are or what we stand for. Well that's where I seem to find myself at this moment because I am dealing with mourning a person that I created in my mind that probably did not exist at all. Facing that reality is a different type of hurt that I think no one wants to have to face the reality of; we literally will avoid facing hard truths about people we have trusted and/or still have in our lives gaslighting us. 

In life, I have had so many people that have switched on me overnight and years later will come back and apologize. But in the process of them doing what they did I literally would feel like it was me because you know that saying "you are the common denominator in all those situations"; I fell prisoner to that thought even though I had other people around me that saw the problem was not me. You know it's hard sometimes to admit in the moment that I am being gaslit or that I am allowing myself to fall into the trap of validating a lie. 

Not allowing myself to see that I was at fault for ONLY not protecting me has been a big deal for this new year journey. This is a difficult journey I am on but I am thankful that I am able to vent to y'all about it. But like always, until next time I will still be #LivingWhileSurvivingLife.

-Jess Lore'al