Addendum to Clarity..

This is written in response to the notes I received in my last entry:

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspLife is a series of pictures, snapshots all taken one at a time. Do we ever take pictures of the bad things, the mistakes? This was said in a movie I saw last night and it makes perfectly good sense. If someone is to move forward with their life, no matter what they think, feel or believe, they can’t hold on to the pictures of the mistakes, the bad times, the pain and strife. (cont.) [Visitor]

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspSo, yes, the chapter should be destroyed, forgotten just like all the other bad things. Will the memories still be there? They will never go away. But, maybe, just maybe, those mistakes will be learned from so as they will never be repeated. This is such a case. I took a great risk and it didn’t work. So now I must learn from it. What I learned is not to be discussed publicly, but (cont.) [Visitor]

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspthe point is that I learned a lot from this, and I hope you did too. It was a great mistake for both of us, and I’m still sorry that it happened. The question is: Are you willing to tear up the pictures you have as well? [Visitor]

A saw it and I believe, was offended that I wrote of it. I had kept silent as much as possible, while often reading in his LJ the feelings he had, experiences he was going through. I had bottled up much of what I felt, in private especially, not even letting him see what the results were for the last few months.

The thing is, that I need a place to write, and this is that place. None that know him read this, to my knowledge.. unless he has directed them here. So I felt it was safe to write, as he had cautioned me before, that if I were to read his LJ, I could do so at my own risk. It seems the rules only applied one way.

But he raised a question that I must address.. will I destroy the pictures I have? Simply put.. No.

There are many things I have gone through, times that have challenged me, destroyed me.. times with T that are too bitter to dwell on now. Times before that I thought were bad. Yet until I had resolved the instances in my mind and heart, I could not destroy them. And so it is now, in this I have much to learn, I have learned a great deal from it, and if a lesson is valuable, to walk away from it makes it pointless. I refuse to believe, and it is my right to believe this way, that there is much that I can continue to learn and grow from.

A mistake made, perhaps. And yet for a time I was able to provide him with a safe haven, a few months where he could be free from the turmoil that his family had gone through, time to heal from what he had gone through before. That the end result brought turmoil again.. I prefer to believe that the time spent where it was not so chaotic, gave him strength in order to move forward to where he is now, instead of throwing his life away irrevocably.

Again, this is my right to believe, he had told me often enough that were it not for the offer I made of a place to stay, that he would have done just that, taken the ride without a return ticket. Of course there are regrets, but I do not regret meeting him, do not regret the friendship I had with him. Regardless of what he believes himself to be, I saw a man who has potential, as everyone does; he is not the only person on this planet without it. To see that in another, to see one without hope, as I felt I was myself, allowed me to realize that my perceptions of my own life were skewed. I do not know that I would have learned as I did otherwise. I do not believe that what I have learned is a mistake.

In the end, we are each accountable for our own actions. I did the best I could with what I had in this situation, as I try to do with any. Success or failure, they still comprise what is my responsibility and what my life will become. I must learn, I must change, and I must grow.. for me.

And with that, I end with one quote..

Those who do not learn from their past are doomed to repeat it. (Voltaire)