forgive and forget

I’d asked for help and support to help me get through thinking whatever thought it was that was blocking my progress.

I was desperate. My grief, loss, and forgiveness literature was falling short. I looked for “achieving closure” and then “emotional abuse.” I came upon this book. The relationship fell into place, details from start to finish. The clarity of recognition.

I release myself from the need to forgive. I can not forget until I’ve learned what I need to from it: what in my make-up allowed this to happen?

I feel like this is going to be a lifelong process because it has moved beyond another person and is now about forgiving myself.

I made a lot of progress over the summer, especially through the summer travel. I had made my peace and expected not to hear from my ex- ever again. It was a wonderfully liberating and empowering journey to let myself (and my expectations of him and what should have happened) go.

He was in town two weeks after I returned from my vacation. The meeting didn’t go that well. Before he left, we’d gotten into a tense but civil spat about family and my parents’ expectations of me and my filial duties to them. I had stuck to my ground because this was something that I’d realized during my trip: I can not turn my back on my family. They made me who I am. And so I had responded simply by saying that my parents weren’t getting any younger, and I needed to be around for them. A few minutes later, I’d pulled up to the curb of the airport terminal, superficially hugged him, didn’t unbelt myself, and let him get his stuff out of the trunk and drove off without anything more.

A few weeks later, I’d written in my journal a recap of the event, closing: “I do like his mom. But that is not enough. I hope E’ll be okay.”

I found out on Thanksgiving Day that E’s mom passed away in mid-November.

Tonight I purchased the Hoffman Institute’s book on using forgiveness to move on. I feel like my belief system is almost there: the summer’s lessons of recognizing the nestling of strength in weakness. And I am hoping that this will help me let go of the past and work constructively with my family and my immediate surroundings.

the strangest thing is that i’ve forgotten! on memorial day, i’d responded to an e-mail he’d sent after months of non-communication that nonchalantly postscripted his summer contact information. my immediate response had been a terse acknowledgement of receipt. my memorial day missive acknowledged that memories of him had faded. and in so doing, i made it so. honestly, in the past two months, i can’t really pull up his face or nearly anything about the presence whose willful absence had so sharply hurt me.

amazing, time.

of course, i am still contending with my present situation, but i am confident that i can regain my footing. one of the nicest compliments ever paid to me was when i was 13 and at a summer nerd camp. one of the “mandatory fun” activities was on magical realism. i wasn’t in that group, but the counselor who’d headed it told me afterwards that another student, erica (older, a shaggy-do’ed sophisticate, and probably by now a downtown hipster type), with whom i shared my 4-person suite, had said i was the most magical real person she knew. wow.

all’s i’m saying is that i know i’m a dreamer and i pretty much have always been. i’ve never subscribed to cliques, which leaves my back uncovered but also clears my head to think freely. daily life inevitably wears down my edges. but i am making a conscious effort to remember these people who have expressed faith in my spirit and told me to protect it at all costs. they are wonderful.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things are filled with the intent
to be lost that losing them is no disaster.
...

Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”

This is actually more about forgiving myself for having so rearranged my life for someone who turned out not to have been worth it. I’m not going to forget—once the fool, twice the idiot. But I am going to be what I was and am and that he didn’t, wouldn’t ever recognize, which is: the best.

5 more minutes before this day ends, and with it the bday of a person who i once couldn’t imagine living without. i’ve just made my donation to a memorial fund. no meltdowns and a surprisingly productive day. whew.