A Dream of My Grandmother

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You are alive again, and my sister and I are under your tyranny. In the dream I try and I try and I cannot live up to it, so I finally give up. I have had enough. I leave.

The dream changes. We are riding in an old truck. You are holding me in you arms and crying, and I am crying. We acknowledge the pain and the hurt and it's power, it's hold over us, dissipates.

I can't tell you that I forgive you. I've honestly never known what that means.

They tell me it means to stop feeling anything negative about you. But every time I think I'm over it, the pain comes back to me, bubbling and caustic. They use the word forgive as if it happens at once and the resentment is over. They use the word as if it's something I can simply fake until it is true.

But I've never been able to do that. Pain comes in waves. I remember, then I work through it, then I remember something else again, and I have to work through that. I peel away layer after layer of the pain until I can get at what used to be my own open, childlike heart.

I cannot forgive. Instead, I release. Because I still feel the pangs of you in my soul. I probably always will. And as long as I do, I will keep releasing these emotions into the world and releasing myself from the grip you've had on my throat.