Forgiveness

Forgiveness is another emotional area I lack clarity in.  I don't forgive -- or maybe it's that I don't forget -- easily.  I'm always amazed by the family members of murdered loved ones who tell the murderers they forgive them. And they sincerely seem to mean it. I wish that were me, but it's not.

I am wary after being hurt. I want to be the kind of person who says, "That's okay; I understand." But I'm not.  If you bump into me, that's okay, I get it, you didn't do it on purpose. If you forget to show up for a lunch date, hey, it happens.  But if you mess up big time, I'm going to be hesitant.  And at some point, I'm likely to say to myself, "I don't trust this person anymore."

This happened with an old friend a bunch of years ago. She'd hurt me before (in similar ways) -- I'd assumed, pretty unknowingly -- and I'd always let it go.  I tried to focus on the things about her that I liked.  She was funny. She seemed to be loyal. She appeared to embrace values that I really appreciated.  She had a lot of energy and was always ready to help somebody.

But then she did something that hurt me so much, I couldn't get over it. I tried to get over it. I tried not to let it color our friendship. I tried not to focus on it every time we talked, or saw each other.  But I found that as time went on, what happened was the opposite of what I thought was supposed to happen. The wound was supposed to get smaller, not larger, and I was supposed to start forgetting. But I hadn't.  I just kept thinking about what she had done, and thinking about how I no longer trusted her, and thinking about how deeply it had affected me. It had changed my opinion of her.  It had invalidated the things I liked most about her.  And I couldn't get past it. The friendship ended.  And the friendship really ended because I wanted it to, not because she didn't try to keep it going. She did.

I sound awful, right?

But the thing is, I do believe there are some unforgivable trespasses.  And I do believe that for each person, that line of unforgivability (a word I'm making up) is different.  I checked in with a few people after I found I could no longer tolerate this person in my life, and they all assured me that they would be wary to forgive, too.  But still, I wanted to be better than that. I wanted to understand this person's position and accept it as valid. And I felt like not forgiving her invalidated her position, which was wrong of me.

But maybe I didn't invalidate it. Maybe she was entitled to her position, and I was entitled to mine, and maybe I was entitled not to forgive her and move on.  Is forgiveness the same as "bringing things back to the way they were before" or is forgiveness something else altogether?  Is forgetting really, truly, "I don't think about this anymore," or is it another way of saying, "Though this happened, I no longer hold it against you, and I trust you again." If so, I don't forgive and forget. But maybe there are some things that can't be put aside. And at the same time, maybe after the event, trust is erased and then it has to be rebuilt.  And in some instances, you can choose to re-trust, and in others, you can't. And is that okay? To hold different people to different standards? I just don't know. What about you?