My favorite author wrote, “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering, is to forgive” and I live through that quote every day. I’m in my twenties and I’m stubborn. There, I said it. I’m stubborn and I want what’s rightfully mine: equal pay, equal rights, the ability to have a whole bottle of wine on a bad day and apologies. When someone messes up, I want to hear that they’re sorry. Now, it may not mean much or anything at all, but I still want to hear them say it and explain how it’ll never happen again and blah, blah, blah.
Life doesn’t work like that all the time, does it? We go from complaining about how this person messes up time and time again and all we get is an apology, when no actions are changed. We worry about how many “sorrys” it takes until we give up. We stress about how often “sorry” is written on our own foreheads, when maybe we weren’t even the ones responsible for apologizing. I think we should stop complaining when someone says it too often or how they say it, because nothing is worse than not getting the apology you deserve.
I’ve been through some pretty dark times when I didn’t know how I was going to pull myself through. I have been hurt to very opposite extremes and deserved the biggest apologies in the world, but I’ll never hear them. There are people in my life that should be writing apology letters to me every day for the rest of my life, that I will never read.
So, I’m going to tell you how to move on from being so sick to your stomach over the sorry you never got. At least my version of how. I didn’t wake up one day with an epiphany on life, apologies and letting go, believe me. I have a problem with letting go of anything, regardless of how deep it cut me. I have realized through time that it takes way too much energy to hate and keep hold of emotions that will never be solved. I will never hear “I’m sorry for hurting you” from those people and I am okay with that. Why? Deep down I have come to terms with the fact that the hurt they caused was ultimately not my fault. It is their character flaw, not mine.
Still, we spend days, weeks and months blaming ourselves for the things that they did or being mad at them. But you’re never going to change them as a person, we all know that. You’re never going to make them understand that what they did was wrong and that you deserve an apology. You’re never going to get those nights back when you cried yourself to sleep or had night terrors. You’re never going to be able to make them understand the pain they’ve caused and that’s okay. Maybe they regret what happened and maybe they don’t; that’s on them, not you. Why allow this person to stay on your mind forever? Negative attention is still attention, so erase them. You can't control anything but the person you are at the end of the day, remember that.
The labyrinth of suffering that John Green wrote about is about life and how you make it out. Forgiveness is the only way out of suffering within yourself, believe me. So forgive, but do it for yourself. The weight you will feel come off your heart and mind will be tremendous. In life it is necessary to let things go and you can't imagine how much time you spend dwelling over something like this, until you can breathe again. You can be bitter or get better; choose the latter.
After time, you just start to realize that if they were good people, they would have apologized and owned up to their mistakes. So instead of being mad forever, I’ll accept their wordless apology and allow myself to be free. The most redeeming quality in a person is the ability to own up to mistakes and faults, so be that person. Don’t be the person that holds on to an apology for so long, you feel as if there’s no reason to even say it. There’s never a bad time and it’s never too late to apologize. Take it from someone who is still waiting on a few.
