Acceptance, Courage, and Wisdom – Living without Guilt

If there’s one thing I will take into the New Year – 2018 – it’s living positively,
and to do that convincingly I am doing away with internal judgement and guilt.

Not only are we quick to judge one another, but we do it to ourselves all the time and it piles on the guilt. We have to appreciate that we are human beings and we have limitations. We can do all we can, but then we have to know that we can do no more and not sink into a pit of guilt. That metaphor is real, guilt is a pit. It’s a pit of sludge that weighs us down and sticks and stops us from climbing out.

I beat myself up about what I cannot do, and I persuade myself that others are judging me on my flaws and failings. None of us are perfect, none of us are meant to be.

We are all creatures that struggle and rise and fall, and need support, compassion, understanding, and love. Practise those same tenets on yourself too.

© Lisa Shambrook

The Prayer of Serenity was written for all of us, whether you believe God gives you power or you find your power from within, this plea is for all: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference – Reinhold Niebuhr.

Let us practise love and acceptance from within and without. I know that when I struggle I’m not the only one, others around me are struggling too. If we could remember that when we think of others, even when we feel hurt or betrayed, we will be better, kinder, gentler people. I wrote recently about Being Kind, and it truly is the way to be, the only way to be. If we can be kind to those around us we can be kind to ourselves.

@DoctorWhoOfficial

I wish as human beings we could live as the twelfth Doctor recently prescribed: Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never, ever eat pears! Remember, hate is always foolish, and love is always wise. Laugh Hard, Run Fast, Be Kind. OK, pears are fine, sorry Ten, really they are, but the rest – yes.

Always – Be Kind – within and without.

 

Love Bites 2016 – Arctic Chill

As one of the hosts for Love Bites 2016, my entry is inadmissible but I’m still compelled to write about the chill of betrayal:

© Lisa Shambrook

Arctic Chill

He shivered, violently, but the chill still seeped through every pore. Her voice tickled his ear and he tried to open his eyes, but his eyeballs wouldn’t keep still and his eyelids failed to listen. Her soft, smooth tones swam through his head and for a moment he was content to drown amid their cadence, and her undulating words held no sense. If he were to drown it would be preferable to the hell he shook within.

As his freezing body shuddered again, her fingers grazed his hairy cheek, stroking the crystalline frost from his beard. His eyes still refused to open and her cheek suddenly rested against his temple, her hair draped across his forehead, her lips touched his, but it barely ignited his senses. Arms snaked about his shoulders and she slipped down against him, uttering nonsensical words that slowly began to pierce his brain.

“Wake up…” the words reeled and lurched and stumbled, but had no meaning. Her voice swathed his consciousness like melted chocolate smothering a truffle. Chocolate leached through his mind, flashing up a vague memory of exotic pralines and dark lips – and the kisses that followed as sultry as the chocolates themselves… Those kisses now moved across his face, and touched lightly on his errant eyelids as he struggled to open them.

Body warmth surged as she straddled him sinking down into his lap, but frostbite curtailed any desire that quivered. His body trembled beneath her fingers and he finally looked into her eyes. His body tingled and convulsed and his eyes rolled, but he caught her gaze and it sent shivers of ice down his spine like quarry bolting from a rat. The warmth that teased his body radiated from her fingers, her arms, her legs and her body, but her eyes shone like an arctic ice-flow, blue and cold and frozen.

Deep within his recollection she evoked a stirring of love, an emotion now so void of worth, his brain couldn’t comprehend the feelings that fell like soft rain in his head. Memories surfaced, like drug-induced hallucinations and her velvet voice caressed his mind as soft as fresh snowflakes. Memories flooded his confusion, but he remembered her coy glance across the dancefloor, his arms pulling her into a tight embrace, her kisses, and her pleasure. He saw halcyon days beneath sun-drenched skies, beneath umbrellas and beneath the sheets. He saw devotion and love and – betrayal. His body recoiled at the memory. It was no longer her dark hair, her dark lips, her tropical beauty, but pale skin and fair hair that draped over his body beneath the bed-sheets.

He recalled her ice-chip eyes as they bore holes in the crisp white sheets as he lie beneath the blonde. Pain and guilt mingled in the frigid air amid the pleasure that writhed upon him. And his lover’s moan of disappointment before she fell across him amongst shattered glass and ruby beads of blood.

Now he sat, naked, chained and exposed in every way possible in a shed on a mountainside, and her eyes stared with cold indifference.

“You remember?” She kissed his ear and it stung with frostbite and shame.

He couldn’t respond; his body was too far gone to elicit any reply. The sores on his wrists from the chains seeped pus and black ichor, and his brain felt the same. She gently lifted herself from him and blew a kiss, then winter’s wind whipped around the barn and his heart shuddered as the bolt clanged back into place.

Memories faded along with his cohesion, and as she sat at another man’s table, and slept in another man’s bed, he faded from existence entirely.

(612 Words)

Today is our closing day…so you have a few more hours to get your entry in…go write about love gone wrong…and link up with the other fantastic entries! 

And if you loved this here are my previous year’s Love Bites pieces: 2013: Pillow Talk and 2014: No More.

And one of my fellow hosts’ piece: Ruth Long – Loveline and Fisticuffs.

Five Sentence Fiction: Conflict

Conflict © Lisa Shambrook

It’s the weight, heavy and constant, which tightens my determination.

Gunfire rattles across the barbed wire and I run, my legs aching and my shoulders on fire. Nerves tingle as the metal within my grip bites into my fingers welding the weapon to my hands. Cold sweat forms, dripping from my brow, and I shift my hefty backpack, but the weight sits firm.

Guilt and desire battle in equal measure and my heart resounds and ricochets like a cannon locked within my ribcage, as I lift my gun…and kill.

 

This week’s prompt over at Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction is conflict…go and read the other tales!