Divine or Human?

To err is human, to forgive is divine. Have I "erred"? Oh yes, many, many times. Have I forgiven? Yes. Sometimes, easily. Sometimes, not so easily and sometimes, a little too easily. What about the ones I haven't forgiven. There are people out there, that I feel have wronged me, that I cannot bring myself to forgive. I have even gone out of my way to find a definition of forgiveness, to see if I could allow myself to forgive them. I couldn't.

Trying to define forgiveness, is like trying to define love. When you say "I love you" to someone, it can be taken completely different than how you meant. To you, it could mean, "I love you as a friend". To the other person, it could mean, "I'm head over heels, marry me now". Just like saying, "I forgive you", could mean "I'm longer have ill feelings towards you, but I do not want anything to do with you", but to the other person it could mean, "I'm no longer angry, let's work on building our relationship again". Here is one definition I found for forgiveness, "Generally, forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge. The act that hurt or offended you might always remain a part of your life, but forgiveness can lessen its grip on you and help you focus on other, positive parts of your life. Forgiveness can even lead to feelings of understanding, empathy and compassion for the one who hurt you. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you deny the other person's responsibility for hurting you, and it doesn't minimize or justify the wrong. You can forgive the person without excusing the act. Forgiveness brings a kind of peace that helps you go on with life."

In one of my situations, the hurtful act was not done only to me, but also to someone I care very deeply about. I will never welcome the ones that did it, back into my life, but I don't feel resentment towards them or the need for revenge. I do feel, however, that what was done was absolutely unforgivable. I find it difficult to have understanding, empathy and compassion for anyone who could do something like they did. In the other situation, I still have resentment and to this day still, want to physically hurt the person who wronged me. I probably never will, but lord knows I'd like to. Unlike the first situation though, I do feel understanding and empathy. I do not feel compassion and do feel that what was done was completely unforgivable.

I was once told, that to stop being angry and to move on, I had to get down to the bottom of exactly what it was that mad me so angry. I thought about what that person did to me, that caused me to become so angry. To me, it was so simple, action = reaction. Then I started thinking backwards from the action and through the course of our relationship. I remembered little things that happened and something clicked. I actually started to feel sorry for this person. I started to recognize their own unhappiness with who they were and I suddenly became less angry. I used to have dreams about this person, in which the entire time all I was trying to do was cause them physical pain. Those suddenly stopped. I felt great! I had finally rid my head of this person! As time passed though, I felt the anger creep back in. I'm not sure why, because I had not seen this person since it happened. While it's not nearly as strong as it was in the beginning, I still find myself, at the thought of them, feeling angry and every so often, I will have one of the dreams, where I just go Mike Tyson all over their ass. Minus the ear biting part, of course.

People say that not forgiving, is to allow that person to rent space in your head. I know that slowly, but surely, I'm putting their crap out on the street, where it belongs, but I still have a few random items that I need to get rid of. Once the day comes when I finally pack up the rest of their stuff, do I think I could actually give it back to them in person and say "I forgive you"? Well for starters, that would be slightly weird, considering there was never an apology, but secondly, I don't think I ever could, because to me, letting them know I forgive them, IS denying them the responsibility of what they did. I feel like it's excusing the behavior. If I can forgive them for this, what else could I forgive them for? What else will they think they can get away with? It seems the road to forgiveness is a complicated one, that has raised more questions than answers, but I will continue on. No one lives in my head without paying rent. No one.