by Melissa Brown

Created on: December 30, 2010

Too many nights and days of my life have been wasted sleepless and fretting. I have laid awake tossing and turning, and for as many days I went from task to task frettiand could not for the life of me figure out why.  That old Freddie Fender song, Wasted Days and Wasted Nights has drummed constantly in my ears for much of my lifetime.

The core of things came to light one day when I discovered that I was brooding about something had occurred in my life when I was very young; something that I let get under my skin that long ago. How could a person hang on to something that supposedly, no longer had the strength to hurt? The only value it still held was that at one time, it was a learning tool; something in my path that I dealt with poorly or maybe didn't handle at all. That must have been the key. Possibly I didn't handle it right then and there, or maybe I just hadn't learned what I was supposed to learn from that experience that was right there in my path to learn from. Thank goodness I've learned to search for the source of uncomfortable feelings, take it out and examine it, and discard it into the pile of lessons finally learned. Why on earth would I let something that ancient cause such havoc in my life today? Could it be guilt? This was not an isolated incident with just one thing, but several things  through out a lifetime that occasionally come up from the past to make me feel uncomfortable to the point of feeling suffocated.  Fear, guilt and shame.  Anger came later, because I felt so duped by such needles manipulating.

Having been raised Catholic, I was raised in the tradition of "fear, guilt and shame", and according to all of my Catechism teachers and all of the nuns and priests, I owned all of these loathsome traits. I remember my first confession, when I was preparing for my first Communion. What horrible sins could a six or seven year old have, that they must kneel in a small, very dark closet and beg forgiveness from a man they could not see, a man who would pass judgment on them and punish them with penance? I remember specifically saying that I could not think of anything I had done wrong. The priest's reply was, "No one is without sin! You must tell me your sins!" My little 6 year old soul was already black. So, I actually started making things up to satisfy the priest. Actually, my grandmother had just told me the day before that I was growing up too fast, and that it was  "Well I committed adultery." I said

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