I had anger towards a person that hurt me. A person that I considered to care for caused me tremendous pain. For years, my dreams were filled of them and my heart was cold and bitter. People will hurt you and that is a fact and those who hurt you may not remember hurting you. That’s the part I couldn’t deal with. Life goes on but you don’t; I didn’t. Letting go was as cliché as the saying “time heals all wounds.” I rehashed every memory, replayed every conversation, rewind and fast forward moments. I also attempted to rewrite history, but the body remembers and the mind never forgets. I would not escape the mental cage I lock myself in. How could I let this happen? The journey to forgive him would be hard because he never said “sorry.” Sorry is such an easy word to say, it is so meaningless and simple. If he would've said sorry earlier, I would have dismissed it but after two years that’s all I wanted. “I’m sorry for hurting you, I am sorry.” I waited.... As I got older, I realized waiting for a sorry is like waiting for a callback after an interview. Sometimes it ain’t going to happen, people don’t owe you nothing! What I had to do was move forward and forgive them even when they didn’t ask for forgiveness. I had to be the bigger person not for him or us but for me. He was living in my head, holding on to grudges are tiring and consuming; I had no peace. My forgiveness journey went through every stage of grief but I was mostly angry. Soon the resentment I carried began cause damage to my other relationships. I blame innocent people for his mistakes and lashed out in reference to my own, living in the past wasn't doing me any good. I remember one night, I thought of him… not in a romantic way or in a sad way. I thought of them as a person. I had never done this before, I always thought of him in conjunction with me. The most important step to forgiving someone is to humanize them. After all, we were once friends. I thought about how he reacted to life, how he was around friends, at parties, and at social events. I remember when I first met him, he was aloof and awkward. He was silly; he showed up to my apartment drunk a few times… he would listen to sluggish music and fade out. I could not recall his smile and it bothered me. I immediately began to revisited the conversations we had, they were only surface level topics. I did not know him. I was attach to the idea of him and the idea of love and heartbreak. I was delusional. We. Were. Never. Together. Once I realized what our relationship was, I began to slowly let go, I had to let go. Not letting go was hindering me, trying to move was a sad attempt to hang on to him. I learned learning how to forgive is essential and grieving is imperative. I was comforted in knowing what we had wasn’t real, and when he did ask for forgiveness I accepted because I gave myself time to reflect and heal.
RelationshipsMay 15, 2017
Forgiving Him Was The Best Thing I Could Do For Me
Time heals all wounds
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