Forgiveness

I must work, indeed, on my hate with the careful attention of an archaeologist scraping away the dust from old bones. It's painstaking some days, other times a breeze. But I keep at it, knowing that what's underneath the ancient grime might be dented and broken, but certainly it needs to get cleaned.
I need to try.
It isn't easy, because forgiving the past means, first, acknowledging that it happened, and that means reviving old horrors. Nobody wants to do that. No one wishes to be "plunged, head down," as James Baldwin put it, "into the torrent of what [one] does not remember and does not wish to remember." But you can't forgive something you haven't struggled with, toiled with, walked on, slept with--and the past is a bad bed partner. There's no comfortable way to lie down with it....
But I must try...
But now I can pray. I can hope and I will believe that I can overcome. There's just nothing else.
~Patricia Raybon, My First White Friend

the year has been full of acknowledging that the past has happened. and struggling. toiling.
I'm trying.
not very gracefully. not smoothly and comfortably.
but I'm trying.