Please forgive me, I did you wrong. Please forgive me, I hated you. Please forgive me, I believed the doctors who told me you were doing me harm. That autoimmune illness means my own body is attacking me. How could I believe such a thing? I was young, almost a child, when you warned me through pain that I was going the wrong way. I was young and naïve, I didn’t see that I was actually hurting you. I was young and stubborn, and I persisted in my mistake for a long time. I whipped you, I blamed you… I saw you as ugly, full of flaws, I couldn’t even bear to look at you. I dressed you up in long and baggy, black, gray or brown clothes and sneak past walls so people wouldn’t notice how ugly you were. And when you became full of pain I considered you an enemy. When you didn’t want to listen to me anymore and I couldn’t get out of bed I felt like you were betraying me. I didn’t notice that I had actually betrayed you first…
I fought you for a long time because I wanted to heal you. That’s what I thought then, that I had to heal you by fighting. I didn’t know then that you can’t heal a body you hate. I didn’t know I would have to make peace with you first in order to heal you. I didn’t know I would have to team up with you first to heal together. That I needed a harmonious relationship with you, that we are together for life, that love is missing. But how could I love you? You were hurting me, so the doctors had told me, and that I would have to hit you with strong drugs to numb the pain and to leave me alone. Yes, that’s what the doctors said, and I believed them, and because of that I couldn’t love you. Forgive me! Now I know that I couldn’t love you because I didn’t know how to love. Nobody and nothing.
You taught me love. It took me a long time to learn to love myself. At first I hated myself, but I didn’t know it. I considered myself a victim of fate and wasted my teenage and youth years wallowing in my own self-pity. I was telling myself that everyone is abandoning me and betraying me, even my own body is doing it. But how could I be loved and accepted if I didn’t allow it? How could anyone penetrate beyond the wall of inner pain I had erected inside me? Little did I know that my inner pain was so great that it had projected outward. In you… I was causing you pain, not the other way around. Forgive me, I didn’t know. Now I know that before you can feel love, you have to learn it from a master. You were my master.
Today I looked at you in the mirror and smiled at you. Thank you, you taught me to smile. You taught me to laugh, even when the laughter caused physical pain in my joints, tendons, and bones. You showed me that laughter warms my soul just as it warms my numb limbs. Now I can look at you fondly in the mirror. You freed yourself from the pounds of hatred from me. You are harmonious and I enjoy dressing you up in beautiful and colorful clothes and showing you off to the world. I smile at you with love, touch you with love and talk to you with love. You are my best friend. We are getting old, but we are together and take care of each other.
You taught me that healing is first and foremost soothing and strengthening the soul, mind and spirit. You taught me to love, to love myself and to love you even if you are not perfect, you still have pain sometimes and you get tired quickly. You taught me to rest, to rest together, to listen to the peace inside and outside of me. You taught me to forgive.
I forgave you for the pain. Forgive me too.
Together forever in harmony. Yours truly,
Oana