Forgiving someone is never easy. And if we're being honest, there are a lot of people who don't deserve our forgiveness. It's much easier to hold onto our pain and anger after someone wrongs us, but that doesn't mean it's healthy for us in the long run.
While it's completely natural to not want to forgive someone right away, you can't hold on to the past for too long before it starts to negatively affect you.
The thing to remember is that you have to forgive the person who hurt you not for them, but for you.
First, you have to stop being angry. I know it's hard, trust me. But you have to accept that what happened to you was the result of someone else's actions, and you have no control over other people. You have to be able to direct your energy into something other than anger so that you are able to really be free of them.
When you hold on to the way someone treated you, you allow them to continue their hold over you and your feelings. They are still influencing you in negative ways, and you have to break that hold in order to successfully move forward. You have to forgive them so that what they did to you can no longer define you, because you are so much more than one person's mistreatment of you.
It's important to know that you can always look back on the memories you had with that person fondly. You can remember all of the great times you shared with someone, while letting go of the negative feelings you have toward them. The saying "Don't cry because its over, smile because it happened" is a good perspective to have. You can appreciate the things a person did for you in the past and the experiences you shared while still recognizing that you need to remove that person from your life now because of the toxicity that they have caused in your life.
Forgiving that person who may not deserve or even want your forgiveness is about allowing yourself to fully function as you again. It is a way of acknowledging and accepting that someone did something to you, while also recognizing that you aren't going to let that be held over you anymore.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that forgiving does not equate to forgetting. Forgiving someone for what they did to you allows you to apply that knowledge in the future, and to set a new standard for how others can treat you. Always look for what you can take away from an experience, and how you grew out of it. This way, you can be sure that you know what you should expect from people and you know how to avoid previous mistakes.
