 Forgiveness |
Email to Shelley, June 2003:
I must have been on some serious drugs that day. I don't remember writing that nor feeling that way. But it's the way I would want to feel, if I could choose. Someone I'm just starting to know said something recently that really made me think. It was so profound but so simple, as I guess lots of profound things are. She said something about how just because a relationship doesn't last forever doesn't make it a failure, and she asked herself some questions about regret. Did she regret meeting him, or falling in love with him, or loving him, or agreeing to marry him? And she realized that the answer to all of those questions was a resounding no. And she realized that her relationship with him is a big part of who she is and that she likes who she is and that it made her better, and that she chose love, and she's glad she did, and she shouldn't be afraid to do it all over again. And I've read these words of hers over and over and over and over and over, almost waging battle with them. Trying to bend my mind into answering those questions in the affirmative. To convince myself that I regret meeting him, falling in love with him more than once, loving him, agreeing to marry him. I've wanted to say YES. I regret it. I regret that he ever chose the seat behind mine in physics class and I regret ever answering the first note he ever passed me, ever agreeing to go out with him in high school, ever tasting my first margarita with him, ever giving him chance after chance after chance. For taking a chance with my heart and my life. I've tried to rage at myself and blame myself and hurt myself for being such a fool. I've wanted it to be erased.
I won't even recognize you I'll just erase you from my memory Put it all behind me Because you are erased But it can't be erased. And sooner or later I'm going to have to somehow reconcile the bad with the good. The agony and the ecstasy, if you will. (Sounds hyperbolic. Is not.) To walk with my sister through my neighborhood's streets and point out the red surprise lilies to her and not want to smash them and to walk under the bright green Japanese maple in the yard with the child's tent pitched beneath it and not want to kick it. I just don't know how. In a quiet moment, a voice inside me sneaks into my brain and tells me that I don't regret any of it, and that it wasn't a failure just because it didn't last, and through and through, it was a blessing. It was what it was for however long it lasted, and what it was ... was good. And I can't change that anymore than I can change how it ended. The beginning and middle have to co-exist with the end. I'm not there yet, but hopefully knowing that I want to be will help me along the way.
Lately I've been thinking about forgiveness, like, as a concept. And trying to figure out what the hell role it needs to play in my life. Lucy Kaplansky sings in a song that I love, "Maybe a person forgives so they don't have to be alone." Maybe a girl forgives so she doesn't have to be alone. I'm restless with thoughts of forgiveness. And I wonder what forgiveness really means. And I wonder if forgiveness is really just about letting go. And I wonder if I believe in the idea that forgiving isn't done for the other person but for yourself. I mean, really, what do I think about that? How will it help me to forgive him? Why should I do that for him? But then I come back to -- it's not for him, it's for me. Or so they say. But I just can't bring myself to forgive him because I don't think he deserves it. But then I think -- this is all in MY mind. He does not give a shit. He probably thinks and says bad things about me just like he did about M.L. because it made him feel less to blame for cheating on her and walking out on her. I don't know how to forgive him. I don't know if I can. Maybe I'm scared to. It fees like letting him off the hook for something so heinous. Like some things are unforgivable. But then I think -- I told Maryliz I could try to forgive the father of her child and try to believe that a person is better than his worst act -- so why can't I try to believe that about S.? Maybe I know why. Maybe maintaining that he is a dirty rotten scoundrel somehow makes it easier. Because if he's just an asshole, then it doesn't mean that he simply stopped loving me. That I am unlovable. And if I admit what deep down I think I believe to be true, that he is a caring and sensitive and decent and good soul, then what that means is that somehow it was about me. Not about what he was but about what I wasn't, which was good enough. It's such a double-edged sword -- blaming him and hating him make me feel like he's the villain and I'm the victim on the one hand -- so that makes me feel better -- but I know that holding onto this anger and hurt and rage and having these unavoidable visions and imaginings of slamming the door on him or slapping his face or screaming at him or slamming the phone down in his ear should ever to attempt to contact me beyond the condolence email -- that cannot be healthy. It comes and it goes but it's with me tonight. Maybe it's from idiotically reading old journal entries from happier times like a DUMBASS. And I think about how he and M.L. would call each other occasionally and make small talk and how occasionally he would go see his old dog but how he would talk so meanly about her. And I know that I could never have these small talky, catch uppy conversations like they did and like we used to long ago through the years. And I wonder if he talks about me like that. And about how he spent so much money on the TV and speakers and plants and trees and blah di blah like he would about all of the stuff he left at her place as if she somehow robbed him of it. And I know that he must know that he chose to plant these shrubs and trees and flowers and buy this stuff and leave it here and I know I never did anything to warrant him talking or thinking about me like that but I wonder if that is how he construes it to other people and to himself. Like, "She didn't even respond to my condolence email. Fuck her!" Or "She stole my cats -- that bitch!" Even though, hello, everyone knows that he left them and never asked for them. So I don't know why I worry about or even care what he says or thinks about me -- but I do. I wonder if he has convinced himself and others that I somehow was the bad guy. Even though I know that I wasn't, and that he knows that I wasn't, and I saw the tears streaming down his face as he said, "You don't deserve this, you don't deserve this." In the process of inundating myself with words about forgiveness in the attempt to gain some clarity, I came across this quote from Nietzsche:
And I have not been able to stop thinking about that. Maybe that's why he always felt such hostility towards M.L. and I would guess that today he feels it towards me. Because he didn't take the opportunity offered to him. Because he chose not to seize the chance our relationship gave him for greatness and happiness, to be his greatest and happiest self, and for a great and happy life. So maybe he'll never forgive me and I'll never forgive him. But I think I've decided that I want to forgive him. Because I don't want to be alone forever. And unless I can finally free myself by forgiving him someday (and that day is not today), I think I will be. And because my hope has not been poisoned. And because if there's anything in this world that I believe in, it's an act of the imagination, and I want to dare to imagine a better future. For me. And maybe even for him. For both of us. Maybe that's what forgiveness really means.
2002: None
2001:
2000:
1999:
© Copyright 2003 elb |
~Mother Theresa Don't let the sun go down upon your anger. Forgive each other. Begin again tomorrow. ~Marmee, Little Women Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. ~Mahatma Gandhi The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing. ~George Bernard Shaw It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ~william Blake This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. ~Francis Bacon And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, "I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself? ~Friedrich Nietzsche To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. ~Gilbert K. Chesterton I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly. ~Genesis 50:17 If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
