Forgiveness Is A Tool

I am a huge grudge holder and have been my whole life. It's very hard to let go of things. I attribute this in part to the fact that I have no concept of time. Things that happened to me months ago feel like they happened last week. Sometimes I think something will have happened a year ago and it was actually five months ago. You get the picture. Needless to say this sometimes makes it hard to even fathom forgiving someone when some things feel so fresh still. It's easy to hold onto those feelings. But not forgiving someone is so awful to our personal growth and general well-being.

Case in point: I used to have a 'friend' who wound up taking advantage of me sexually and then treating me like shit when I was at a very vulnerable time in my life. I consented, yes, but he tried peer pressuring me into doing things I just didn't want to do. Mainly, giving up my virginity. Every time I said no he would go into this lecture almost about how since I had masturbated with toys before I wasn't actually a virgin and so this made no sense. That I should just have sex with him already. That I was being stupid about it. This is the one thing that I stood fast by though. There are other things he did like play the victim after I cut him out of my life the first time around, driving a slight wedge between my friends and I for a time. I don't want to get into everything that happened since he is not the main focus of this writing and the things he did do not need to be brought up in detail.

When I finally cut him out of my life for good, all he said was he understood the reason why. I don't know if this is true or not. He never said sorry to me so if he understood he didn't really give a shit. After I finished blocking him from all social media he moved states to go to college. I never forgave him. All the anger and pain I just buried inside myself and I thought that was good enough. I never had to see him again. I was free from him. I could move on.

This is a false way of thinking. This is not truly moving on from what happened, it's just forgetting about it and not addressing what happened. I thought I was OK. It had been years, I had truly moved on and he was never coming back anyway so it didn't matter, right? Besides, he didn't deserve my forgiveness at all. Forgiveness is only for people that didn't commit horrible acts and then refused to apologize and be accountable for them in any way. Forgiveness, I thought, was for the repentant.

A month and a half ago I went to my local grocery store. I took my time going through the aisles. Everything was fine. I got to the meat department and was trying to decide on which premade sandwich to get and I heard a voice call, "Addy?" Had I recognized his voice I never would have looked up or I would have pretended I didn't know who he was calling for. But I did look up. I saw his simpering smile from behind the meat counter as he gave me a small wave. You know...until that moment I have never understood what a simpering type of smile would actually look like. I've read it as a descriptor in books but could never truly picture it in my head until I saw his face.

My mind froze as I was caught completely unawares. I didn't know what to do so I just waved back with a shocked look on my face. I then ducked behind the display I was near and grabbed my sandwich, tossing it into my cart before quickly walking away. My heart was racing. I could feel the panic rising into my chest, making me feel trembly. Once I was safely a few feet away and out of talking distance I took my phone out of my pocket and immediately told the only other friend that was aware of all that had taken place between him and I. My fingers just wouldn't work right so I alternated between using talk to text and actually texting. By the time it took me to walk from the frozen vegetables to the dairy section I had gone from feeling panicked, to extremely angry, to feeling like I was about to break down into tears in the middle of the store. Three minutes later I was in my car and completely exhausted as well as feeling sick to my stomach. He wasn't supposed to be here, especially not here.

I'm not saying that if I had forgiven him I wouldn't have had as strong of a reaction. I believe part of the reason for such a strong reaction was half shock at seeing him and at being addressed as if everything between us was fine. I do think if I had somehow known he was there ahead of time I would have been a little more prepared. I just think that forgiving him would have massively helped. It also would have helped processing it all. My way of processing what happened in the couple of days that followed was to log on to my secret Facebook and cyber stalk his profile. I obsessed over every post, rolling my eyes and scoffing. I learned that he was planning on crowdfunding for a used bookstore. For some reason this made me angry. How dare he.....sell books? After the second day I had to force myself to stop and admit that I had to work on forgiving him.

You're probably asking why he deserved my forgiveness all of a sudden.

He doesn't, and he never will. But I do.

Forgiveness is nothing more than a mental tool for self care and inner peace. Forgiveness is for the person forgiving, not the one being forgiven. The people that have hurt you will not always feel guilt on causing pain. When you don't forgive, process, and move on, all you're doing is holding on to toxic emotions that can cause toxic acts. Meanwhile, the other person is laying down at night and sleeping while you have tear filled nights of insomnia. They're living their life not even thinking of you and this whole time your world is still revolving around them and giving them power.

Just because you forgive it doesn't mean you have to forget. I don't have to be friends with him. Shit, I don't even have to be cordial to him, but I should forgive him because I deserve it. I deserve peace and to have my power back. I deserve to be able to go shopping and pick out a simple sandwich without having some sort of emotional breakdown in the middle of a store.

And so do you.

When we say someone is not deserving of our forgiveness what we are really saying is we are not deserving of happiness and inner peace that comes with letting go. Which is obviously not true. We all deserve to live our best lives free from self blame and pain. Utilize the power of forgiveness, re-contextualize it in your brain as a tool to help get you to that place of freedom from pain.