23/04/2022
THE ETERNAL RETURN
Mother. Father. I forgive you.
I no longer wait for forgiveness for I no longer wait for myself.
I stand here, whole.
Frightened, trembling, but whole in fear, complete in my trembling.
I am bigger than any of us imagined.
Great and ancient terrors well up inside of me, yes, mother, but I am willing to give them a home now.
A searing loneliness surges up from the underworld, yes, father, but I have learned to stand inside it and not reach to you for a salvation that could never come.
I have lost God but found God in the absence of God.
In the infinite blackness, I have found hope.
Mother. Father. Do your work as I have done mine. Meet your darkness as I have met my own.
Your neglect was your own self-neglect projected.
Your abuse was your own self-abuse thrown blindly into this world.
What you did to me, you did to yourself first.
Your own inner children are crying out.
Do your work. Face your pain.
Or do not, and face its eternal return.
Mother. Father. I forgive you.
I have no time to waste on blame any longer.
I am stepping into my wildness now. My raging truth.
Walking my authentic path towards that glorious horizon
(which I sense is my own deepest self).
I give everything to my own heart now, all that was denied.
I shall no longer postpone a full participation in the glory.
I forgive everything that was not given and I give everything for this forgiveness.
I step bravely into the Unknown. I step bravely into myself.
Mother. Father.
As you birthed me, I birth my own body and uniqueness now.
I died, yes, but I shall be new and you shall not recognise me.
I find nothing left to forgive, only the dream of how it was “supposed to be”.
I raged at the old dream, I incinerated the old dream with my rage and in the ashes of the old dream I found clarity and brand new purpose.
I grieved the old dream, I wept out the old dream, I drowned it with my tears and at the bottom of the well of my abandoned self, I found peace, and a strange willingness to keep walking.
And I began to dream anew.
My own new dream.
And that is why
I can forgive you now.
Mother. Father.
- Jeff Foster