I was listening to Pillow today, that great song by Tom Verlaine who I just can’t get enough of these days and those lyrics just hit me right where it counts, and although it is years since I heard this song, when I hear the line “you are remembered well. Putting on that overcoat in June…slipping off that old corsage… it’s nothing, really nothing. What does the dove see? There at the window. These pains are very hard.” and I agree. These pains are very hard and they hurt like hell and at this time of year, it is almost too much to bear, and then I remind myself that these pains can be just memories if I let them go — if I allow myself some modicum of self-forgiveness then surely happiness will follow. Why is it that even when others have long since forgiven, the hardest thing of all is perhaps to forgive onesself for past mistakes. Why is this so very, very hard and why is it that no matter how far away from said mistakes i get, i still feel the weight of them hanging over me.
Perhaps part of it is a natural part of some greater effort to live and learn, but gone a bit bezerk, a bit too stern. Perhaps i figure if i hold onto those mistakes and do not let myself off the hook too easily, a thing i see others do and am constantly amazed, then i will be a better person. i will not do said thing again because i will always remember the pain it caused and so on. This is not to say i should wear a hair shirt all my life. I don't believe that. But i also never understood those among us who do not hold themselves accountable. Who hurt those around them, usually those who love them most, and then let themselves easily and gently off the hook with some prefabricated excuse that they call a "reason" and then it's all okay. I love how they just go to bed and sleep, as if their actions had no effect on others. I realize that such behavior must be to some extent, slightly or more sociopathic. That to lack empathy to such a degree can never be a good thing and in the end, i believe that those lacking in empathy who go around hurting and lying and cheating will in the end, find themselves alone. I really do believe that. But in the here and now, i see such people and i admit, i envy their slick and oily ability to slip out of any situation. To sneak and snake their way out of being essentially caught red-handed by devising some absurd story full of extraneous detail (there's the tip off that someone is lying to you, by the way; it's a documented fact that expert liars will always put in too much detail - it's the small stuff that gives it away.
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