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“I am so sorry for what you went through. I honor your pain and I apologize for my part in the situation.

I am so sorry! If I could change the past, go to that moment again and undo it, I would not hesitate. At any cost. But I can’t. All I could do at the time, was not allow anything like that to happen again.

I also carry the pain of that memory. As you do. With empathy I have been able to accept it and forgive myself.” I said to my son.

” I cannot change the past, but what I can do is change the present and the future.” - I continued.

He was 15 years old, it was around that time of the dismemberment of the family. The sorrow, the helplessness, the wrath of divorce. Like that wasn’t enough, he had a horrible fight with his older brother. Instigated by me in an indirect manner but the result was very direct, harming him in a deep way.

Sometimes is only one scene in the plateau of our lives that will make a mark in the delicate fabric of trust.

Sometimes anger goes around misplacing its motives looking for a scape goat. Sometimes when that happens, the wound invades the innocence of the personality, staining its source.

It is outrageously unfair.

He was cheerful, kind, helpful… supportive. It all changed.

He felt betrayed… abandoned… unloved…alone…helpless. Watching his change was torture.

Knowing I had provoked it, was hell.

It took some time to notice the consequences. It took some time to heal.

I never resisted his anger. He just needed to express it. I acknowledged the need for it when he wasn’t too furious to listen. I admired him for being so open with it. I admired his determination for demanding better.

At some level his anger was a gift. It kept me conscious.

I took it step by step.

But I had to make peace with it.

I had the privilege of having a lot of help and support. After several conversations with friends digging into the roots of the problem, and taking action to make sure it was not going to be repeated, I was able to accept it as a painful scene, frozen in the past. The past I was helpless to change.

I have had several soul conversations with my beautiful son about it. Now he is 25. I think he is at peace with it too. His kindness and helpfulness came back. He is also supportive. I am not sure about the cheerfulness.

He made peace with his brother years ago.

That Saturday morning, he was open, we talked about it in depth in his bedroom, with his girlfriend, when he was 16. After exploring his pain, his father’s pain at his age and the weakness of human nature in general, he said:

“And when you do this mom, when you acknowledge the past in the present, you not only change the present and the future but you also change the past.”

Luz

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Do you believe that somehow in your inner world stands a frustrated little child hungry for attention and love, who projects its needs into your adult life, interfering with your present actual dreams, confusing the hell out of you, and injecting you a lot of the time with a feeling of emptiness  and devastation similar to the one you experienced in your remote childhood ?  

Your childhood, so remote and yet so near.

You have a child from your past, present in the household of your life, acting out. Now.  Invading your space.  Preventing  you from being you today.  Making important decisions for you.

The irony is that it is not even about you.  Is about that little child, stuck in some scene of your past, frozen in time.

Demanding acknowledgement.  Directly intervening in all your relationships, because it wants those people in your life to notice it, to feed its anxiety, to fill the holes, to become the parent it is longing for.  It can be any of them,  your lover, your peer your child, your boss or your relative…As long as the relationship feels familiar to that remote scene frozen in its past.

(Every child is an artist, the problem is to remain an artist when he grows up.  Pablo Picasso)

It will continue repeating the same behavior, in the hopes that somebody is going to make everything  right for it.  One day.  One day, somebody will rescue it, and liberate it away from the carousel  scene of the past.  Going around and around.

Except that it is mistaken, the only person who can really pull it away from the carousel is you. You and only you  can really calm it down.  It is yours, lives in the household of your life.  It needs your attention.  Nobody else’s.  It needs to hear your grown up command.  The whisper of your will. Your will to live in the present.

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