Forgiveness

I was in therapy about a month ago when I was at the height of my “angry, bitter, I hate my ex” phase and my therapist was telling me I need to forgive her, not for her but for me. At the time I was having a tough time grasping that concept but this weekend I had a run-in with a different ex who made things a little clearer for me.

I was talking to her about clearing up some things (dropping off possessions that wound up in the wrong place during the move, some financial stuff) and in the process she exploded in a venomous verbal assault that would wither a sailor’s ears and then slammed the conversational door unwilling to listen to anything I might have to say in response. As I sat there reeling from the unexpected tirade, feeling slightly angry and a great deal misunderstood, I started to think about how miserable her life must be holding on to all that bitterness, and how sad it was that I wasn’t even aware of the majority of her grudge. She had blamed and stewed and sat in that mess for months, allowing our long-over (we’re talking years now) relationship to continue to have power in her life, while I was blissfully on to other things.

It was then that I really understood what my therapist was trying to say. Forgiveness doesn’t really do anything for the person I’m giving it to. Most times they won’t even realize or care that I’ve given it because they haven’t spent months obsessing or even thinking about whatever it is that I’m forgiving them for. What forgiveness really does is release me from the chains that have held me prisoner to that anger and allow me to move forward with my life without constantly being yanked back into that deep, dark pit. There was a time in my life when I was like her. I’d find myself driving home from work having an angry conversation with someone in my head about something that had happened ten years or more ago where I had felt mistreated or misunderstood and hadn’t been able to express myself about. Even more depressing was the realization that the people I was having these imaginary conversations with probably hadn’t thought about me or the incident I was angry about in years. I was talking with my grandmother about it one day shortly before she passed away and she said “Sarah, doesn’t that stuff ever get heavy? Don’t you just want to put it down and stop carrying it around with you?” I said “Sure Gram. I just don’t know how.”

The “how” is to just do it. Take all that anger and hurt and realize that whoever that was probably wasn’t trying to hurt me, because most people really aren’t like that. We hurt people accidentally because we are confused about what we want, or because we don’t communicate well. The people who have hurt me were doing the best they could with the life skills they had, just as I do the best I can everyday with the wisdom and knowledge that I have. So I write them letters, I tell them what they did that hurt me and I say the things I felt I didn’t get to say, and then I burn the letter and as the smoke rises I let all the anger and bitterness drift away with it and I forgive the hurt and let it go. Sometimes it takes me more than one letter, especially for things that were so devastating they changed how I saw the world afterward, but eventually I stop thinking about those things. When I try to think back about what it was I was so angry about, sometimes I can’t even remember clearly anymore and that makes me feel a whole lot lighter.

© Sarah Ultis 2011