Girl's Behavior

Forgiveness and Why It's Important

Forgiveness and Why It's Important


Forgiveness doesn't mean you're not hurt.


It doesn't mean that whoever hurt you is innocent.


It means that you aren't letting resentment seep into your bones. It means that you aren't blaming them for the angry person that you've become. It means that you are free from the sickness that can consume you when you've been torn apart by someone.


If you live your life taking names, you will never feel free. Look into your heart. Think of the last person who caused you grief and simply say to yourself, "I forgive you."


You don't have to tell them that. You don't have to reconcile with anyone if you don't want to. You just have to let go.


Forgiveness and Why It's Important


Like everyone else, I've been hurt. But I spent my adolescence becoming gradually more and more bitter, I've let my resentment consume me. At my lowest points I've thought of whose actions had a hand in digging that hole that I fell into. And eventually I realized that they may have dug the hole, they may have even pushed me in it, but I was the one letting myself lay in it. I wasn't climbing out. I was sinking deeper and deeper into the earth, swearing at the world on my way down.


And I'm lying if I say that I still don't hold those resentments, but I'm learning to let go.


Because to someone somewhere, chances are, you're the person they blame when they sit in their hole. We're all so caught up in who's wronged us that we are blind to who we are wronging. And even more so, we forget that we aren't helpless. When you get pushed down, stand back up.


When I was a freshman in high school, I was jumped in the cafeteria by a few girls over something extremely petty. All the damage they did physically was a cut over my eye from my head hitting a table. Their punches felt like nothing at the time. I felt nothing. And even after, I felt nothing. No bruises, nothing.


But it did devastate me, emotionally. The entire school was talking about me. Social media blew up with it. Most people were on my side, but there were many who taunted me, threatened me, laughed at me. I remember leers from girls, and whispers. A group once tried to lure me into the bathroom but I realized that it was a trick. I still don't know what they were going to do to me.


My mother put me in a new school. Completely new school, where I had just one friend. I developed major anxiety problems and subsequently developed an addiction to sedatives. That addiction destroyed my GPA and ruined the friendships I had built. Recovery was a bitch. And I remember thinking that if those girls hadn't done what they did, I wouldn't have spent a week in inpatient dry heaving and convulsing. And I wouldn't fight the need to relapse everyday.


But it hit me when my mother said what I was thinking. "They did this to you. "


But they didn't. They didn't say "let's ruin her life. Let's give her debilitating anxiety and a drug problem, let's ruin her grades and close some doors of opportunity. "


No, they were kids who wanted attention and they got it. I let my life get to the point it had gotten to. They had no hand in it.


And my family, they wanted to blame those girls. But they never blamed themselves for what they'd done to me. Its too much to get into but I've been borderline emotionally abused my entire life. And my first day back from inpatient my mom lost her patience with me after a few hours, and told me she didn't want to "deal with" me and that she's gonna take me back because "this is ridiculous. "


She was mad because I couldn't sleep.


My father, a functioning alcoholic, has adopted the motto "I regret having you" when he's on a drunk rampage. When I told my family I was suicidal during a fight, he told me to kill myself if I wanted to.


My mother loves me very much. My father loves me very much. They are people, flawed people, even more so than your average. But they love me. They have hurt me, but I forgive them. Because at the end of the day, I know they'd die for me.


And even if they didn't love me, holding onto that resentment only produces self pity. Self pity doesn't motivate you to change. It lazes around in its own misery pointing fingers. It is hypersensitive to criticism and never allows self growth.


Let go of self pity. Start forgiving. Not for their sake, but for yours.

Forgiveness and Why It's Important
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