I’m feeling introspective right now. It’s not due to being down or sad or anything negative, just feeling a bit inward. Writing that post about my dad has lengthened the tunnel as well. He and I have had a few heart to hearts about the past and about our regrets, what we would do differently, what we wish had never happened. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling to me, this “I wish I’d zigged instead of zagged” feeling. All of which has me thinking about the idea behind forgiving and forgetting and moving on.
Oscar Wilde: “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.”
I look back on my life and think of mistakes I’ve made, of people I’ve hurt. The list in both categories is substantially longer than one would like. The irony is I try to do what I can to not hurt people, I’d much rather hurt myself than hurt anyone else and have proven to be something of a pro in that area. I think I can come across as quite hard and uncaring, when the truth is I am mired inside by different things and I can’t figure out what it is I really do feel. In those instances the kindest thing to do is to let people go, else they twist and turn in the washing drum of what they perceive to be my emotional machinations. And that’s not the case, but it’s better to let someone think you’re a bad person than a person who can’t figure things out.
Mark Twain: “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
IWhen I was a child I was wrapped in the egocentrism of childhood and words came out as thought, barbed in the way that honesty can be. As a teenager I became angry and moody and difficult and said things designed specifically to hurt. As an impatient and fiery woman in my 20’s who spoke her every thought I struggled with the person I was and was keen to wound, to draw to the quick and ensure a quick death to the relationship. My 30’s came along and I have continued to injure, mostly out of ineptitude, occasionally out of cowardice.
I would love for every person I’ve ever hurt to know that I am truly sorry for it, and that karma will pay me back. But if I’m honest, I hope that people I’ve wounded aren’t thinking of me anymore at all. I hope they’ve moved on and moved up, moved into beautiful and better things and with relationships that leave them sated and happier than they ever could have been. I may hurt people but I never mean to.
Mahatma Gandhi: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
And the truth is I have long struggled with forgiveness. I could argue it’s a result of my black and white condition of BPD. I could argue it’s because I had an upbringing that enforced that people were either good or bad, there was no in-between. I could say all of those things but the truth is I maybe struggled because I am human, and humans aren’t brilliant at letting things go. You want to forgive and forget but you don’t want the party that wronged you to forget that you forgave them. Wear your epaulets of pain with pride and all that – my human condition may be suffering and if that’s the case then you must recognize it. If you hurt me then I won’t give you another chance to hurt me because I can accomplish that just fine on my own, thanks. If I forgive then it means that what happened is inconsequential.
But it’s as my lovely German therapist told me – forgiving doesn’t mean you condone it. It just means you no longer need to hold on to it.
And she’s right.
She often is.
It’s like taking a hand and running it down the side of a sideboard, taking everything to the floor with it. Why carry shit around with you, when we all make mistakes? Huge fuck-ups, little mistakes, tiny aches, big pains – there’s no point to it. If I want other people who I have hurt to be happy, maybe there’s a chance that someone who hurt me wants me to be happy, too.
Not too long ago I found an old contact on Facebook. I sent him an email apologizing for all that happened between us so many years ago, and he replied back that he was sorry, too. We’ve had very infrequent contact but we hear from each other from time to time and I am honestly just happy that he’s moved on. He’s happy I moved on. And yes, he’s this guy.
That was then. This is now. And I have enough of a history to know that everything that I have done and had done to me can be let go as they happen. It doesn’t always mean it’s easy, but it does mean that my baggage is just a little less heavy.
Lewis B Smedes: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
-S.
Every thing you ever said, everything you’ve ever done has contributed something to who you are and where you are today. You can wish things were different in the past but then you’d be a different person today and you’ll never know if that would be better or worse.
Never regret.
I did a post on this very subject not too long ago. Forgiveness is something necessary for all of us to move on, to function as human beings. It is liberating of ourselves to be able to forgive. (I’m not so sure about the forget part, but I digress.) Yet forgiveness can never, ever, be forced, and sometimes it takes years to forgive a serious trespass or injury. And some truly grievous injuries (like the murder of your child, to use an extreme example) may well be beyond the capacity of some to forgive, at least in this life. But I honestly believe that nothing is harder than forgiving yourself. And it looks like you are well on the road to doing just that.
I think one of the very hardest things in life is to forgive.
Learning that forgiveness doesn’t mean you condone what happened is even harder. And that letting go doesn’t mean you will forget-you just move on. Little pieces of the whole puzzle and all that.
I struggle with the “forgive and forget” thing, because I have a wonderful/horrible memory. I remember everything, which can be wonderful but is sometimes horrible. If someone hurts me, I will never forget it, as much as I wish I could. And when I remember it, I will remember every nuance of feeling and voice inflection and things that I feel were floating just under the surface that were unsaid. In short, it’s like it’s happening all over again. Eventually, and by that I mean years later, I can sometimes still remember it and just say “who the fuck cares?” But until then, it’s almost impossible for me to forgive, no matter how much I want to.
I wish I had an Alice in Wonderland like pill to make me forget. Especially now. I have a lot of memories I’d love to erase right now. Then I might be better at forgiving.
[...] Remember my post on forgiveness? Like to direct you over to Shannon’s place for an even more inspirational post on the subject. More focused towards her life experiences, but well written in her inimitable [...]
I still struggle with forgiveness for one person in my life. Sometimes I think I am done and have forgiven, but then it comes back to haunt me. Sigh. I will keep trying.
Forgiveness is a tough thing. It’s a really tough thing for me, and as much as I know it’s wrong, I do harbor very ill feelings against a lot of people and blame them for a lot of things. A part of me thought I’d hold onto that forever…and then I showed up (notsomuch invited) to the 5-year-reunion of the high school I very abruptly left when I was hospitalized for an eating disorder. I blamed the people there for making my life so hellish as an angsty teen, and for the awful way they treated me. But I realized, as I talked to each of them (after the requisite “Oh my god, I didn’t even recognize you!” “Yes, probably because I eat now.”), that most of them grew up. And turned into really nice people. And I’ve mostly stopped feeling so hurt by what happened a decade ago.
I hope I get to a place someday where I can do something along the lines of what you did, both with the facebook contact and WRT moving past how your father treated you as a kid. I love this one line from Alanis’ “Unprodigal Daughter:”
One day I’ll look back and feel something other than relieved
“forgiving doesn’t mean you condone it. It just means you no longer need to hold on to it.”
Beautiful, just beautiful.
You wrote that post before I started reading, and apparently you didn’t have archives or I didn’t stalk far enough back, because I hadn’t read it. I understand completely. I had a similar experience 3 days before I turned 17. Not nearly so violent, but a violation nonetheless.
I remember when it happened – I moved on with life – didn’t want anyone to know. I had the typical victim outlook – that I was partly to blame, because I had invited him over when no one was home, blah blah blah. I just wanted it to go away. 20 years later, it has. I hardly ever think about it. Until a week or two ago, when my daughter’s friend were joking about rape.
My initial reaction was to scream at them. I remained silent. My daughter doesn’t know I was raped. For some reason, telling her – I just don’t want her to feel it is that close to home. So I guess maybe I’m not as healed about it all as I would like. I can’t talk about it without some emotion. But by far, most days I don’t even think about it. SO I guess…that’s good enough.
Wow. You are so impressive. You’ve inspired me to let go of the last of what I’m carrying against my father. If you can not only forgive your rapist, but apologize to *him* for the bad stuff between you two, I can certainly do this.
I don’t have a hard time forgiving, but I never forget wrongs. Unless I’m subjected to continued torture from that person – then I have a hard time forgiving. I guess I’m only good at forgiving if I can avoid the person forever.
This post really resonated with me, particularly this bit:
“If you hurt me then I won’t give you another chance to hurt me because I can accomplish that just fine on my own, thanks. If I forgive then it means that what happened is inconsequential.”
That’s where I am at at the moment, I can’t let go of past hurts, and I’m damned if I’m going to give anyone else a go at hurting me. I choose to not open up to people anymore, I’m just not prepared to go through it yet again
Wow. <3
Now you’re just intentionally antagonizing Solomon. Quoting Gandhi, Twain, Wilde, and Smedes on forgiveness but not Jesus…(heavy sigh) :)
But seriously, you’re absolutely right. Forgiving is good for everyone. It was also great to see you encourage your sister to let your dad be a part of her world yesterday even though (I presume) you’re still at odds with her. Good on you.
Two monks— a teacher and a student— were walking along. They belonged to a sect that was supposed to have no contact with women— no touching, no talking, no nothing. As they walked, they came to a river ford. The water was high and swift, but the ford was passable— barely.
By the side of the ford stood an old, frail woman. It was obvious that she could not cross the river on her own. Without a word, the teacher picked her up and carried her across the ford. The student followed. When the teacher set her down, the student stalked after him in silence.
After a few hours of walking, the student said to the teacher, “Teacher, we are not supposed to have any contact with women! Why did you do that?”
The teacher looked at him calmly and replied, “I set her down at the edge of the river. Why are you still carrying her?”
Sometimes, we forgive because otherwise, we’re just carrying that woman around…
When my ex and I broke up I carried around a lot of anger towards him and the things he had done to me. The lies, the cheating, the violence and then I was taught about forgiveness. Someone once told me that when you refuse to forgive someone the only person you are hurting is yourself. And it was true. He didn’t care at all that I was angry with him. It wasn’t keeping him up at night. He wasn’t losing one moment of his life thinking about it. I was. So I forgave him, I let go of it and I’ve tried my best to move on.
Beautiful post. And so true.
A thought for comment: I have always believed forgiving and forgetting were related but different. Seems to my forgiveness is an event; forgetting is a process. But should the two occur together?
It’s true. I know it’s true. What I don’t know is how. I’ve been hurt. Relatively recently, by someone I love (not, I hasten to add, the wonderful B). I can’t blog about it, and in fact no-one knows about it apart from me, B and the person who hurt me. I’m trying to forgive, and I’m trying to move on. But it’s hard. And you hit the nail on the head. How do you forgive without condoning? That’s what I’m really struggling with. What happened was, to me, so wrong, that it feels wrong to move on from it. Like in forgiving I’m saying it’s acceptable. Which I can’t and won’t. I suspect I need to find a friendly German, but in the meantime, I’ll just have to keep trying on my own…. and hope, like you, I really can move on…. which, given that what’s happened to me is as nothing beside what happened to you, sometimes I think I really should.