What's Done is Done

What’s done is done.

William Shakespeare

 I’ve never told anyone else before.  Never.  No one.   

We hear it all the time.

It was hard, very hard, to say what she knew she needed to say.  A lifetime of keeping it in.  Decades of secrets, hiding who she was, the things she had done.  She’d grown accustomed to the darkness that lurked within.  It was comfortable in its own deeply uncomfortable way.

But it was time to be released from the prison she had locked herself in.  The guilt.  The shame.  The regret.  It was time for each of them to begin to go away.

She was ready to pour it out.  All of it.  As much as she could.  It was time for the hurt to go away. Time for amends to be made.  Time for healing to begin.  Time for light to shine through.

When she got started it poured out.  The years of binge drinking.  The lying.  Sneaking around.  Betrayals.  The anger and disappointment she caused her family and friends.  The lost years, too many to count.  She hated them all.  She relived them day after day, night after night.  She hated herself.

But in telling it, a lock was turning inside and her release was coming.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Oscar Wilde

It was time to stop being so lonely. Time to stop juggling all the wrongs, afraid they would drop and shatter the careful façade she hid behind.  It was time to stop being afraid of being judged.  It was time to open up, to let it out, to own her story and her life.  It was time, finally, to forgive herself.

It was time to start thinking that not everything she’d ever done was wrong.  It was time to find something good.  It was time to find a safe place, to be free, to leave the pain behind.

It did her no good to live in the past.  It didn’t help at all.  Not one bit.

Finally, her life could start again.

Maybe she wasn’t so awful, after all.

Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.

Fulton Ousler

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash