thoughts on cruelty and forgiveness

Had a very nice and relaxing day with Dan. It might have taken him twenty years of marriage, but he's finally figured out that I do want any material gifts or cards for Valentine's Day - I only want to have time with him. And that is what he gave me today.

I have been thinking a lot about forgiveness today.

It is one of the most important things you can do in life, for you own well being. I learned that the hard way, after a horrible childhood filled with abuse.

It is all too easy to hate and resent people who have been cruel to you.

But when you hate, it can come to possess you. It can destroy you.

You must forgive, before bitterness eats up your heart, and sours your life.

When I finished up my bachelor's degree, I had to take two college classes about Christanity. One of the classes was taught by a nonpracticing Lutheran pastor. he summed up my feelings about forgiveness in much better words than I have ever been able to state.

When someone hurts you, you must forgive them. You have to let that go. Otherwise it will hurt you. BUT if there is a pattern of cruelty, you do not need to put up with that. You must forgive the person who hurt you (for your own good) but you do not need to accept further bad acts. Forgive - but you do not need to forget. And you must not subject yourself to further harm, if that is at all possible.

The cruelest person I have ever known was my mother. It was difficult, given how monstrous her behavior was, but I was finally able to forgive her. But I did keep my distance from her, as much as possible, for the remainder of her life. Why subject yourself to abuse? And once I realized how emotionally and mentally sick she was, it was easy to forgive. Yes, she enjoyed hurting people. But she was mad; she might not have had a choice in that.

Now, to my former friend. There are many wonderful things about him - in fact, I will probably always be very glad that I knew him, and part of me will always love all of those fine qualities that drew me to him - his intelligence, his humor, his love of books and music, his broad knowledge of history, his funny laugh. He is funny and charming, and can be quite kind at times.

Yet, that pattern of cruelty is established now. First, the thing that happened to blow up our friendship; he put me in a very bad situation,and when I objected to that he told me that I was unimportant, so vindictive completely innocent people have to be protected from me, and fit only to be used for casual entertainment and nothing more. This came out of the blue from a friend I adored and trusted. Three months later, when I made my first approach to see if he would like to be friends again, he never even asked how I was, though he knew how upset and hurt I was. Rather, he stated that he had not done anything wrong, and asked why I had a problem. That resulted in one of the few times I have ever completely lost my temper with someone, and I screamed my head off at him. I am not proud of that; I view it as a great failure on my part, as I have always felt very strongly that someone hurting you does not give you the right to hurt them in return.

Well, in the following year I have asked for forgiveness. I have approached him again and again, asking for a chance to talk things out and be friends again. At times he has been friendly - enough times to hope that things might indeed work out. But whenever push came to shove, he would put me off with excuses so lame as to be insulting. Now I know that there was nothing for him to forgive, and nothing to work out - but he let me think that there was for a year. For a year he knew that I thought I had done something that had offended him or hurt him, and let me make approach after approach to work things out, and he never had the courtesy to let me know that I was not the problem. And that is just cruel.

So, while I will always love many things about this man, and while I freely forgive him for his actions, as they are clearly due to extreme insecurity, I cannot stay in such a situation.

I wish him well. I wish him happy. I hope every good dream he has ever had comes true for him.

But it is time for me to move on. In a way I now feel free - now I do not have the weight of thinking that I have horribly offended or hurt a beloved friend on my shoulders anymore. And now I can go forth with happiness and freedom and find new friends, real friends, other people to love, who will also love me.

In the end, life will be good.  Life will be sweet.  And I will be free.