I’ve been in therapy basically every week since the first of the year. It’s been a really rough several months, and I needed to take the time to consciously process all that’s happened. Old wounds were brought up right before Christmas which led to some discord among the family and disconnection. (I didn’t go home for Christmas, and my sister unfriended me on Facebook and isn’t speaking to me.) Then, right at the beginning of the year, I found out that the guy who assaulted me almost 13 years ago was getting out of prison. His time has been served. So to speak. He was sentenced with two 30-year sentences after what he did to me, but in Indiana, not only do you serve sentences concurrently, they also have a “serve one, get one” law in which you get a day taken off of your sentence for every day served with good behavior. So two 30-year sentences are essentially a 15 year sentence, if not shorter (as in this case) as you can be released early for good behavior.

So… yeah. That was kind of a mind-fuck for lack of a better word. He’d been in prison since the day he hurt me (well, county jail first, prison months later). Just shy of 13 years, and he’s out. At first, I let fear take me over. Do I need to watch my back? Is he going to come after me? Do I need to get a protective order? I reached out to some people who worked on my case and my dad who’s worked in the correctional system for years. Of course, my fears were quelled, and I was assured that he likely will just be happy to be free and do all he can to remain so. I got all the information I needed to follow up on him (he is still on parole for quite some time), and I know I have resources around that can help me.

I’ve spent weeks thinking about him. How he’s doing. If he’s going to be able to make a life for himself. If he’ll reconnect with his daughter (who was 1.5 when he went in; he was 16). I wonder if he’s gotten help – if he’s figured out how to connect with his spirit and love himself despite it all. I wonder if he thinks of me and what he did often. I wonder if he’ll just end up another repeat-offender stereotype, finding himself behind bars again eventually.

I’ve gone through various scenarios in my head of what I would say to him if I had the chance, if I ever wanted to. They always go back and forth between telling him off, cursing him out, and likely kicking him in the balls versus telling him I forgive him and love him and see the Divine in him and that he is worthy of all love and belonging and can do all he wants with his life from here on out. I pray for and bless him a lot – that he’ll be strong and good and have a good life, hoping that by now he knows what he did was wrong and has faced his consequences for doing so and that he’ll be inspired to do good in the world from here on out.

I don’t know…

It’s a weird dichotomy that goes through my head of wanting to see him flourish and wanting to see him fail. I lean much more toward the flourishing than the failing, so I guess that is a good sign.

I realized that the part of me that would keep me from telling him off is the part of me that doesn’t want to make anyone feel bad about themselves. It’s something I’ve been learning about my personality overall. I suck at standing up for myself, especially when I’m confronted or someone’s wronged me. I can recall so many situations in life where I was confronted with conflict and instead of taking the opportunity to voice myself, I cowered down, made myself small, and agreed that they were right.

In addition to all this, I consider myself a Divine spiritual Goddess; I strive to embody the spirit of the divine in all that I do. I’ve equated divine godliness with passivity. To be godly, you must not ruffle any feathers – you should appease everyone, always be nice, bite your tongue, and never be mean or angry toward anyone. And that was the life I was striving to live – one that didn’t cause any discord or drama. To be the perfect little godly girl, I need to be agreeable, right?

I’ve let this “It’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine” attitude and the fear of confrontation keep me from standing up for myself. I’m also kinda a pushover, so I let people walk all over me because I have such a desperate need for people’s approval that I don’t want to do anything to make someone not like me. It’s not being fake. It’s survival mode. Fear taking over my heart. I put other’s needs before my own to a fault.

This became abundantly clear when during therapy I realized that I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the guy who tried to rape and kill me – that’s why I didn’t want to tell him off. I can’t be harsh and rude and mean – that’s not divine…

How ridiculous! Why do I care at all about how I make this guy feel?

What if he needs to be told off? Even if it does make him feel like shit about himself, maybe that’s what he needs to really grow and expand.

So it brought up this question within me: Can you be harsh while still being divine?

I’ve written before about the importance and value in speaking truth to the bullshit. It is our divine job to call out injustice and to set someone straight when they aren’t acting divine. Jesus flipped tables, right? He was angry, and he let everyone know it. I’ve been too afraid to flip the tables of injustice in my own life. My fear of confrontation and desire to not make people mad keeps me from doing so. (After all, it was Jesus flipping tables that made the priests and teachers of the time start thinking of a way to kill him…. Those in power don’t want truth spoken to bullshit.) But I’m realizing that needs to change. All it does is lead to regret. I can think of so many conversations (many recently) in which I didn’t stand up for myself, and if I could do it again, there’d be so much more I’d want to say.

When is being harsh Divine? What sorts of situations require divine harshness? When is it our divine duty to speak truth to the bullshit and call people out on their transgressions? In parenting, they talk about “tough love” and how it’s needed to teach lessons and do what is best for our children. Can the same apply here? Jesus flipped tables. When are we allowed to?