"You Intended To Harm Me But..."

"You Intended To Harm Me, But God Intended It All For Good": Genesis 50:20

Every time I think of the past hurt I wonder how I was able to get through it.  I think about the cruelty and bullying I endured, holding it inside of me like a volcano about to erupt.  I had never in my life thought that I would be the one to tolerate such abuse yet what I did not know was that we are never above it and that abusive people are skilled at bullying while others are skilled at tolerating it.  I believe that people select people like me that are tolerant and that in some way are susceptible to abusers.  Throughout the years of nasty comments and racial slurs what I learned was that in order to stop it I had to get out and start over again.  I have since restructured my life and found that inside of my ability to tolerate is a little voice that says I am not worthy.  It was for me the very reason that I mistook negative attention as love and horrible treatment as the only thing I deserved.  Although I won't share the details of the relationship I can honestly say that it cured me and that I won't ever tolerate that kind of harassment and bullying that I tolerated from people who in my opinion were transferring their own insecurities and self hate.  Although they intended to harm me what really happened was that they enlightened me and made me understand that God intended that experience for my growth.

Often times we look back on abusive relationships with anger.  It is OK to be angry at the abuser but holding on to that anger can only result in our own demise.  The anger that we hold on to will in fact eventually poison us.  What must happen is that we turn that anger into truth, understanding that we did not deserve it.  On the other hand we must admit that we invited that bully into our life and manifested that person or group of people because of our own unhealed pain.  It is in fact our self-image that makes us a target for people who live to put others down so that they can feel good about themselves.  When we are victimized by haters it is because they can see we are tolerant.  Once we accept one negative experience we invite more of it.  It is really just up to us to see the disguised abuse, name it and get away from it before we fall victim to the person who has a lot of practice abusing others.  When we have been raised in abusive households we are much more inclined to select or accept abusive people.  It is in fact because we find it normal and our irrational mind makes us think that this is a comfortable space to be in.  In fact, this is a false message and one that we fall prey to because we are so tolerant and have overcome abuse before.  We believe it is what we deserve.

Earlier I stated that I had been cured of abuse and I would like to share with all of you how that happened.  In brief I had to experience that last abusive situation because I had not yet realized my worth.  That dishonoring experience cured me for good because it was so horrific.  It made me decide to heal myself and work on making my spirit believe that I was worth more.  It gave me a chance to finally let go of the false beliefs of my past, the ones that said I wasn't worth it.  I finally took back all the things that I enjoyed in my life before I gave it all up to make someone else happy by complying and pretending to be someone I was not.  What I understand now is that I let myself be disrespected and that I needed to take my life back no matter how scary that looked.  What I know now is that the signs were there and that I simply bypassed them and yearned to be loved and accepted by people who did not know how to love themselves or each other.  Standing in the light of God is where we find the gift that we truly are.  Only then can we witness our value and know we are worthy.

To each of you who are in an abusive relationship, either soft core or hard core abuse, I want to say that you can get out.  I also want to share that the longer you stay the more your soul will be darkened and the harder it will be to heal.  The scariest part may be leaving the abuser and perhaps some financial benefits but in the end tolerating the abuse will force you to fall down into a spiral of hell, one that you may not be able to heal from if you don't decide to fix yourself.  We must remember one very important thing about life.  Loving our selves is at the core of living a joyful life and when we live with abuse we are not loving our self.

Elliott Maximo Collazo