Forgiveness is easy but to forget really takes a great deal of time.
I remember back when I was schooling, I was that girl who fight for justice. When I see people being treated unfairly, I would speak up because I just couldn’t let things go and allow the people around me to get hurt.
I don’t know if it’s me but sometimes people who don’t know me tend to judge the words I say or write and eventually misunderstood me for the things I didn’t mean. Usually, I wasn’t pointing fingers at anyone but rather the issue on hand. Eventually I fell out with a friend. I was hurt not because he scolded me or anything like that, but because he like the rest of them judge me and misunderstood me despite our stronger friendship.
I was angry. I was upset. I was feeling angst about the fact that he choose to talk about me with his friends just to fit in. It hurts so much because the friendship means so much to me back then. I deleted his number on my phone and we never spoke since then.
It has been at least a good 4 years. Every now and then, I see pictures of him on Facebook. I hear common friends talking about him. I see him “everywhere”. Honestly, I feel happy for him to see how well he is living his life. Have I forgave him? I think I did.
I realized that nobody did things to hurt you on purpose. If I told him I was hurt, the odds are he’s feeling the hurt and guilt too. All humans have feelings. But at that point of time, I just couldn’t see that and all I did was to end the friendship quickly.
It takes a great leap of faith for me to jump out of the situation and to be writing about this. But if one doesn’t forgive, one simply does not move forward in life. Will I contact him one day? I probably won’t because this friendship is broken and no matter what, the scars are there to stay. But despite that, I believe I’ve done what I can and that is to forgive.
To forgive is definitely much easier than to hold onto anger and resentment. The next time you find it difficult to forgive someone, just remember that they are only humans and humans are allowed to make mistakes.