Anonymous asked: People make mistakes. I get it. I make them too. But I don't seem to make the kinds of mistakes that people have made and affected me with. So I am at odds with how to go about forgiving people for making some of the worst mistakes possible. Where do you start? I know that in order for me to grow emotionally I need to forgive the people in my life who've wronged me. I mean really wronged me. I just don't know how. Lately I've been feeling like I'm being poisoned by own resentment and I want to stop it. It's changing me and I don't want to be that person.
Help?
Forgive-Me-Not
Dear Forget-Me-Not,
Is forgive and forget a viable option? Are we able to forgive someone and truly move on from that hurt? Or is it better to just move on from that hurt and worry about forgiving them later, after we forgot?
The problem with forgiving and forgetting, is when neither is truly possible. With some relationships, it gets to a point where you just have to accept that they are gonna do shitty things all the time and the only option is choosing to live with it or cutting them off. People who have dealt with drug abuse have had to deal with this dynamic constantly, and they call it enabling. It’s the act of constant forgiveness itself, and then forgetting so you can believe them THIS TIME, that they’ll be a change that allows their terrible behavior to continue. Eventually, the families themselves develop their own terrible disabling coping methods just to get by.
It seems like you’ve allowed yourself to be a doormat for too long, and it’s not your resentment that’s changing you, its the texture of your wool. A doormat, once used to scrape the crap off the bottom of our shoes, becomes flattened and useless after enough uses. No one wants to feel down-trodden, defeated, and the only way to stop being a doormat is to step away from the door.
Infinite chances are for suckers, you have to set a limit to how many times you’ll hear the same I’m Sorries and This is the Last Time. People often think that if we put up walls, we’ll lose our connections to the people we love, but you don’t have to use bricks to mark a line in the ground. A line you will not cross, and others will not either.
There’s a christian prayer that says, “And Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That quote is especially appropriate, because we don’t consider a friend to be trespassing if they hang out on our lawn, but those that have wronged us enough times become strangers to us in time. Forgive and forget, let the pain go by kindly asking them to leave. They may come back in time, but if someone has wronged you, you’re under no obligation to keep swallowing their poison.
Remember these immortal lines, “But pardon me bitch, as I shit on your grass. That means hoe, you been shit-ted on! I’m not the first dog that’s shitted on your lawn,” The Old Dirty Bastard warns us with great eloquence, that everyone will take advantage of someone who allows themselves to be taken advantage of.
So respond simply, as ODB did,
“Hoeeeee! Yeah, heyyyy, de haaaaa
Hoe, ohhaowwohh!
Hoeeeee, de heyyyy
(This is dedicated to all y’all bitches)
De, haaaahhhh
Hoeeeee! Yeah, heyyyy, de haaaaa
Ahahaahaaah
Fuck y’all”
