I’m home by myself cleaning today. The kids and my husband are at a relatives house about 2 hours from our home. I can’t stop thinking about my family and how they’ve been acting and its making me mad.
I know you possibly heard this story before or one like it, but I need to use it once again today. Please read as it pertains to what I’m about to say (taken from http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/812861/jewish/A-Pillow-Full-of-Feathers.htm)
In a small town somewhere in Eastern Europe lived a nice man with a nasty problem: he talked too much about other people. He could not help himself. Whenever he heard a story about somebody he knew, and sometimes about somebody he did not know, he just had to tell it to his friends. Since he was in business he heard quite a lot of rumors and stories. He loved the attention he got and was delighted when they laughed because of the way he told his “anecdotes,” which he sometimes embellished with little details he invented to make them funnier and juicier. Other than that he was really a pleasant, good hearted man.
He kind of knew it was wrong, but… it was too tempting, and in any case, most of what he told had really happened, didn’t it? Many of his stories were just innocent and entertaining, weren’t they?
One day he found out something really weird (but true) about another businessman in town. Of course he felt compelled to share what he knew with his colleagues, who told it to their friends, who told it to people they knew, who told it to their wives, who spoke with their friends and their neighbors. It went around town, till the unhappy business man who was the main character in the story heard it. He ran to the rabbi of the town, and wailed and complained that he was ruined! Nobody would like to deal with him after this. His good name and his reputation were gone with the wind.
Now this rabbi knew his customers, so to say, and he decided to summon the man who loved to tell stories. If he was not the one who started them he might at least know who did.
When the nice man with the nasty problem heard from the rabbi how devastated his colleague was, he felt truly sorry. He honestly had not considered it such a big deal to tell this story because it was true, the rabbi could check it out if he wanted. The rabbi sighed.
“True, not true, that really makes no difference! You just cannot tell stories about people. This is all lashon hara, slander, and it’s like murder, you kill a person’s reputation”. He said a lot more, and the man who started the rumor now felt really bad and sorry. “What can I do to make it undone?’ he sobbed, ‘I will do anything you say!”
The rabbi looked at him. “Do you have any feather pillows in your house?” “Rabbi, I am not poor, I have a whole bunch of them, but what do you want me to do, sell them?” “No, just bring me one.”
The man was mystified, but he returned a bit later to the rabbi’s study with a nice fluffy pillow under his arm. The rabbi opened the window and handed him a knife. “Cut it open!”
“But Rabbi, here in your study? It will make a mess!” “Do as I say!” And the man cut the pillow. A cloud of feathers came out. They landed on the chairs and on the bookcase, on the clock, on the cat which jumped after them, they floated over the table and into the teacups, on the rabbi and on the man with the knife, and a lot of them flew out of the window in a big swirling whirling trail.
The rabbi waited ten minutes. Then he ordered the man: “Now bring me back all the feathers and stuff them back in your pillow. All of them mind you, not one may be missing!”
The man stared at the rabbi in disbelief. “That is impossible, Rabbi, the ones here is the room I might get, most of them, but the ones that few out of the window are gone. Rabbi, I can’t do that, you know it!”
“Yes,” said the rabbi and nodded gravely, “that is how it is: once a rumor, a gossipy story, a ‘secret’ leaves your mouth, you do not know where it ends up. It flies on the wings of the wind and you can never get it back!”
I tell this story because my entire family over the last 12 years has gossiped about me. Granted, I’ve said things to them that weren’t nice and I have apologized to them too, but the trashing of my name continues on. Even the ones that say they love me now, although I’ve forgiven them and I love them to death, I can still feel the sting of their gossip. It can’t be so easily undone.
I got an email from my brother this week. My heart is broken beyond what words can say because I truly trusted my brother, with everything in me. He was the brother I respected and looked up to. He said so many hurtful things to me, like I was bi-polar and took words other have said about me and stated them as fact. The hardest one was that he told me I deceived my own mom. He said I had her convinced I was sweet and innocent and if she only knew.
The thing is, my mom knew me the best and understood me the most out of my entire family. She was the one who cared even when I acted out of character. She seen it all. There was no deception. I have never once claimed I was innocent or sweet. But this is a common theme. Every time my family is mad at me, they say these things. They say I have abused her trust, I’ve stolen from her, and she bought my lies. This is not a new thing–its something I’ve heard from practically every one of my siblings at some point.
My older sister is using emails and a letter from 10 years ago when I was 22 and saying I’ve been “trashing her name for years”. Seriously? I’m sure she got high marks too when she was 22. We all know my siblings have been nothing but golden over the years.
If I’m being honest, I’m fairly mad. I am reminded of all the hurtful things my entire family has said about me to each other. If they had not gossiped, they would have not given my other family members fuel to keep their lies about me going. I sat on the curb outside my house after I got this hateful email from my brother and I truly just wanted to die. I felt like there was nothing really worth living for and that if I went out, they’d have nothing to say about me anymore. They would have to carry the guilt around with them for the rest of their God-forsaken lives because they have big mouths and have to drag my name through the mud to make themselves feel better.
I’m not going to lie. I only feel a little bit better. Most days I still want to die. I still want to be done with these people. I still am hurt–no wounded by the years of pain they have caused me in the form of angry words and lies. My hurt is heavy because I know they really believe that I am all those things they say and much more. And that hurts so much, I just can’t even explain it in a blog post.
I saw my mom dead on a floor. I got into a car accident 2 days later. Has any one of them even called to see if I’m ok? Do they even care? Has anyone called to see if I need help? No, not one. They’d rather send me emails and insult me and bring up my past and shove it in my face and be condescending. My favorite part of the email from my brother was this, “I do agree with you that you have gotten the raw end of the deal. Life sucks. I didn’t plan it that way. I’m not the one with the power here. Which leads me to another point. I read on facebook that you “hate life”. Direct quote. Well, of all the wonderful things I’ve heard recently, that one hurt me the most. Only because God created life. And you hate it. It saddens me that we can’t all appreciate life – even if it is taken away from us too soon. Michelle, there are a lot of wonderful things that God has created for us. You only have to see them as good. Once you label things as bad, you throw away the good, the possibilities, the opportunities. Don’t go on hating life, Michelle. You can hate me, but don’t hate everything God has created. There’s no place in God’s kingdom for that kind of thinking. Well good luck on completing the rest of your responsibilities. I’m glad it’s you and not me that has to deal with all that stuff.” Notice he doesn’t say that I shouldn’t hate life because he loves me. No. I should not hate life because God made wonderful things, but apparently he didn’t make me wonderful because I’m so hateful. And yeah, thanks for the offer of help at the end you condescending jerk weed.
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