Day #30: Forgiveness

They say when you forgive someone, you're really doing it for yourself, and not them.

They say this in case you really don't want to forgive the person you're forgiving.

But if you follow up telling someone you forgive them by saying--

"Just so you know, I'm only doing this because my therapist says it will set me free."

--Then it sort of defeats the purpose.

Let's face it: Forgiveness is meant to make a person who's wronged you feel better. It means you're over it, and yes, it does set you free, but it also sets the other person free.

Whenever I think of that, I imagine someone hating someone else so much that the two of you are in the ocean, and the only way to drown the person you hate is to go down with them.

Strangely enough there have been times in my life when I would have gladly gone down with the person I was mad at just to make sure they sunk too.

Isn't that...ridiculous?

The dangerous thing about being mad at someone is that logic is the first thing to go. You lose all sense of reason, because if we're being honest, there's nothing logical about anger.

Oh sure, if someone kidnaps your wife and ties her to a train track, it's understandable that you would be upset.

But most of us get upset for...well, let's face it...pretty dumb reasons.

Then we hold onto that anger far longer than we should. Most of the time we're only holding on so tight, because after we realize how stupid we're being, we'd rather continue being stupid than admit we're being stupid.

Does that make sense?

Probably not.

Anyway, I realized today that part of the Nice Project would have to be forgiveness.

But who do I need to forgive?

Ohhh, I have a few people.

But what does forgiveness entail?

The people I'm angry at would never know if I forgave them, and, truth be told, they wouldn't care.

So I forgave them, and felt nothing.

Even I could tell that was a cop-out.

I felt like I should forgive someone who would actually care that I was forgiving them.

I ended up going with the only person I still have unfinished business with as of now. An ex who ended on a very, very bad note.

Ever since the break-up, we've had this tension between us, because we both know we screwed up, and I think it was easier to just pretend as if neither of us did, and go on with our tension-filled post-relationship fake-friendship acquaintance.

Well, I put a stop that.

TEXT FROM ME: Hey
TEXT FROM HIM: Hey
TEXT FROM ME: You know all that stuff that happened between us? The bad stuff?
TEXT FROM HIM: ...Yeah?
TEXT FROM ME: It's fine.
TEXT FROM HIM: It's fine?
TEXT FROM ME: Yeah, it's fine.
TEXT FROM HIM: Okay.

Ten minutes later.

TEXT FROM HIM: That's cool.
TEXT FROM ME: Yeah, it is.
TEXT FROM HIM: You're fine with me too.
TEXT FROM ME: Excellent.
TEXT FROM HIM: Yup.
TEXT FROM ME: PS I didn't need to be fine with you, jerkass.

I didn't actually send that last one.

Every once in awhile the bitch still rears its ugly head.

Work in progress, right?