When forgiveness feels impossible

Some of us would rather pass a kidney stone than forgive someone.

The anger feels like it will always be a part of us, because that part still wants things to be different.

The part that says, “Once they’re different, then I can forgive.”

Once that person says sorry. Once we go back and change what we said. Once we get what we feel we’re owed.

So we continue to place our forgiveness outside. As if it were outside our control. If we cannot make these things happen, we cannot forgive.

Revenge feels good and then it doesn’t. Retaliation feels strong and then it feels empty. Like a barrel of a gun thirsting for a fresh bullet. A new target to keep the heat going while my ears are still ringing.

Because the feeling doesn’t go away. Pain can’t be externalized. Blame is like yelling at a campfire while the whole forest is in flames.

Sometimes, there’s something we could have done. Sometimes, there really isn’t. And then all that there’s left to do is be gentle with the heartbreak of expectation gone asunder once again.

When we choose to not forgive someone, we are chained to them. The chain is the desire that things were different. Forgiveness is the key that undoes the lock.

Maybe the hardest part of all is knowing that if we were to forgive something in another person, it would mean we’d have to forgive it in ourselves, too. And for a lot of us, that is the impossible.

Some of us have suffered so long, to feel relief would be a betrayal.

Do not be so loyal to your suffering that you let it become your identity.

Your identity does not ask for loyalty. Neither does your suffering.

Forgiveness and expectation cannot exist in the same space. Forgiveness is not conditional. Because it is synonymous with love.

And love is synonymous with acceptance.

And acceptance, with peace.

Different words, same meaning, same path.

And the more we walk down this path, the more opportunity we have to keep the trail open. Kempt. Tended to. Nurtured.

If forgiveness feels impossible right now, allow yourself space. You don’t have to think about it all the time. Realize that thinking about it all the time solves nothing.

And in the space that we give ourselves, we start to feel what it would be like to not be so crowded. Crowded with the thoughts that burden, with the stories that could fill an entire room with sharp objects and hard surfaces.

The space we create gets to be decorated differently. As spacious and sparse as we like. Or filled with all our favorite objects, things that give us life (for me it was plants, fluffy pillows, colour, paintings, dogs).

And in this way we learn that by creating the reality we want to live, that is forgiveness. Allowing ourselves to no longer stay in a place that’s punishing, inside or out.

All life does is move, and ask us to move with it. We’re born knowing how to, but we’re taught resistance. Force, masked as strength.

Forgiveness feels hard if we focus on the things we wish were different.

It gets easier when we realize nothing needs to change in order for us to forgive, except ourselves.

Love, love, love again.