The past is behind me, the future lies ahead, I am grateful for the knowledge I’ve gained from the past, but I’m open to new lessons, and new challenges. Sometimes these lessons really hurt, sometimes they hardly count as lessons at all – they are experiences we all go through that cause us pain and stress, which is an everyday part of living.

I don’t believe in resentment, or living in the past. I don’t want to be bound by it or to it. Freedom is the higher value here, which is another kind of justice, and certainly the condition of possiblity for all other kinds of justice, as well. 3 years ago

The more I understand, the stronger I feel, and the stronger I feel, the less victimized I am, and the less victimized I am, the more compassion I have, and the more compassion I have, the better able to forgive. Forgiveness is a letting go, and then the moving on comes of it’s own volition, as effect. 3 years ago

I think I’m almost done with this.

Forgiving, letting go, and moving on is mostly about facing reality rather than hiding from it and resenting it. In other words, its about ceasing to be a gigantic, self-centered baby. This has to be a general life practice because let’s face it – people will continue to piss me off, hurt my feelings, and let me down. Why? Because the world doesn’t revolve around me, as I am slowly beginning to understand. Yes! The Copernican revolution in my own head is underway.

As I have discovered, thus far, if one commits to moving on, the rest generally takes care of itself. You can’t move on if your holding on, and you can’t let go if you haven’t forgiven.

We’re all human, and life is far from perfect. That’s reality, and I think we should all just suck it up, and get on with it. Living, I mean. And by “living” I mean living well, living to the fullest in every sense.

None of these things are “problems” – they are part of the landscape. I’ve come to realize that I’m really immature. And I used to really dread “growing up”- but now I’m ready to move forward.

There is absolutely nothing interesting or inspiring about remaining a self-centered idiot one’s whole life, and I know I have much better things to do with my mine. It’s true that I had “alot” to forgive – but who doesn’t? This is the normal course of events. I’m really looking forward to being a strong, determined person. 3 years ago

I need to remind myself about what I’m moving toward and why.

sometimes I feel like an asteroid that’s fallen from some distant planet and landed on earth with absolutely no pre-understanding about how anything works, at all. In fact, I feel this way on a daily basis.

I mean, I like it – but I just don’t understand it, especially the really bad bits.

But also the practical things that everyone should know, and needs to know I don’t seem to know. I would make the worst housewife EVER and it’s just lucky for me I didn’t come of age in the 50s or I would be doomed.

No one could benefit more from having a housewife than me.

Sometimes I fantasize about meeting a really domestic man who loves to cook and is some kind of neat freak, but very tolerant and kind about it.

We would have great conversations and fantastic sex and travel, and never have to worry about money because we are both so frugal and creative and and intelligent.

And he would teach me how to cook and clean, and all the other things I never learnt from my own mother.

But in the meantime, I would like to learn the art of living well, and acquiring a few more life skills, because really, I do aspire to be a useful human being. 3 years ago

the past is behind me, but it still lives in my mind – this is the case for everyone. There isn’t anything I can do about what’s already happned, but I have choices in the present; I can choose where I’m going and what I want in the present moment. I have this freedom, I have this choice. I know I’m just repeating truisms and cliches when I’m saying this – but the part of it that isn’t a cliche is that – its a hell of a lot more difficult and anxiety provoking to claim your own freedom of choice, and step toward the future, which is essentially the unknown, than it is to stay where you are, and with what you know. It feels fake to do this at times – because I don’t feel like I”m choosing to stay stuck. But if I’m honest with myself for two seconds, I actually can see how I’m doing this, and continue to do it by not doing what I “want” to do, or say I’m going to do – by avoiding my anxiety and stuff I don’t “feel” like doing. Essentially, by choosing my comfort. Maybe I have to get a lot more honest with myself about how I’m serving my own interests (or what I think or my own interests) with my dysfunction – lets face it – that’s what it is.

Why lie to myself? I take the path of least resistance. Why lie about it? Why make it an issue of “the past” when its really the present that I’m responding to. I tell myself its about the past, but I am responding in the here and now. And generally, I spend a lot of time avoiding my “anxiety” – that is – avoiding discomfort. I baby myself, and it’s pathetic.

Well -? What do I need to do here? Move on, yes. How? I find that often I just ask myself the wrong questions – and I need to keep asking until I get to the right question. I keep looking for a way out, for the easy way out. There is no easy way out! This is life. What kind of warped, spoilt, immature perspective have I cultivated that even makes “easy” remotely synomous with “life”? I am tired of being such a pathetic fool. I want to grow the fuck up. 3 years ago

I’ve come to realize that what needs to change in my life, is me. I’ve only recently come face to face with my own victim consciousness, and this is a story I tell myself in order to rationalize my fear, instead of facing it honestly. I’m a coward, is what it gets down to. I’m not saying this to put myself down. I’m saying this because it happens to be true, and because I don’t want to be a coward anymore. Some of my fears are rational and some are not. My rational fears I have to either live with, or work through. My irrational fears – I need to face up to, and drop. I used to think I was pretty clear headed, but I’ve come to see that – I have a lot excuses for not moving on, and one of them concerns all the bullsh*t I tell myself about how I’ve been hurt, harmed, abused, misunderstood and otherwise “wronged”.

Well, it’s taken awhile, but I really don’t feel like hanging onto this life – clinging to it, really – anymore. I want to work on myself, on becoming the kind of person who is capable of living a good and productive life. I need to change, and this is what I’m going to focus on.

What is a grudge anyway? It’s a waste of time. I’m letting them go. 3 years ago

It’s seems I’m starting to move on – maybe the forgiveness comes after the moving on, in some cases. I think it must. Well, often people have no intention of moving on, which is why they choose forgiveness. And maybe moving on is its own kind of forgiveness, or requires some kind that a person isn’t wholly conscious of – I mean, you must let go of something in order to move forward.

Anyway, I resolve to be patient and honest with myself. At this point in my life, I really am “all about me” – out of necessity. I need to get my shit together, and I need to focus on myself and my life in order to do so, and ignore the demands and complaints and even the “needs” of others in the process. This isn’t easy, but you know – life isn’t easy, and I think I’ve long laboured under the illusion that this is a real problem, and that I should some how find a way where or how, it is easier. But that’s such bullshit – because – to string one more cliche here – nothing worthwhile is easy. I get this, because life, which is worthwhile or should be – is not easy. 3 years ago

You know, I have no idea how to do this. Every time I thing it’s something I’ve achieved, I realize I haven’t at all. I don’t understand forgiveness, and I don’t really understand the point of forgiveness, and this is because I don’t believe in forgetting – anything. It’s the historian in me, I suppose. I think it’s important to remember. I think it’s important to remember what happened, and to remain undeceived.

But letting go is starting to make a lot of sense. I don’t know if I forgive my family or not, or if I even have a right to, or if this means a damn thing. But I am completely prepared to let go of all of them, in the interest of moving on. I’m not interested in forgiving when I know the same thing is going to happen over and over again. I know it. 3 years ago

This is such a different process than I had expected it would be. For one thing, you tend to feel worse because you are facing the true feelings and facts of your own history, which is really painful every single person on this planet. Denial and fakery is compelling for a reason. Forgiveness really is about perspective, I’m starting to realize.

But forgiveness is about what you want to do with that pain, and where you want to go with it. And it involves a fundamental issue of justice, and that is, that in life – there is none. This can make a person really cynical and even hopeless, I think. And at it’s worst and most extreme, entirely antisocial. It isn’t the case that “life isn’t fair” – but that life is life, and really – the only point in judging it is to resolve to live it better, and to be better – not out of some sense of revenge or arrogance, but because, I think what our pain teaches us, via the various betrayals that create it and sustain it – is that we want and need to be treated with love and respect. You can’t demand that from the past, or achieve it by resenting the past. But I think memory serves when it serves as kind of instruction for what doesn’t work. I think a person needs to orientate their desire toward what they want to be and do what they didn’t get and needed, and just work hard, day by day at trying to realize those ideals without resenting reality for being what it is, or life for not treating you as you want and even need to be treated.

Moving on in this sense means moving forward toward the better thing; using the pain of the past to inform the importance of doing so and being so, and no losing sight of the truth of the heart, which is why tears matter, and why we should not forget our sorrow, but try to find some resolve in it – not for revenge, or for justice – but for a good and loving life. 3 years ago

so much harder than it sounds. the first step is honesty: what exactly do you have to forgive? the next step is the gut check: just were is that energy sitting? where and what is the feeling? What is it’s history? what age are you, when you think of it? how do you really feel?

okay. my sister. I feel about 7 years old, and totally powerless and sad. it has always made me feel so very bad, the way she has treated me. sad. hurt. somewhat humiliated. generally – unloved; hated, even.

i have been my sister’s scapegoat. she hated me because of how my mother favoured me and put her down. really – she wasn’t missing out on a damn thing. anyway, I got to pay the price for that – over and over again.

feel trapped, abused, helpless, misunderstood. she hates and resentments me, and always have.

yeah – i forgive her – but she is still punishing me, and it will never stop. I really just don’t want to have anything to do with her, but then I get shit about that as well.

she projects all this shit at me and onto me; and – she “demands” I be her “friend”.

Obviously, I am not obliged to take her shit, or be her friend. But I am left feeling really bewildered by her.

I guess I’m really not interested in taking any more of my sisters shit, ever again.

I am tired of feeling like I have to “defend” myself around her. she makes me feel like I’m fucking crazy – when she is the crazy person. I guess I really hate her guts, and I don’t know or understand what “forgiveness” means in this context, but I know it’s a process.

hate her guts – well, is this even true? not really. what I mean is – I hate being around her. I hate how she treats me. I hate how she doesn’t listen to me. I hate how defensive she is.

I feel really trapped in this relationship with her.

On the other hand, I barely see her, and she is an idiot. Do I really care what she thinks of me? I mean, the woman is a fucking twit, and I know it. I don’t need to “defend” myself against this shit, or forgive it, or anything else. I need to forget it, and shake the dust off my fucking boots.

I need to see this bullshit very, very clearly. Margie is her mother’s daughter to the goddamn bone. And ignorant, demanding, self-centered, insecure, idiot from hell.

And now that I have seriously lost every single illusion about this asshole, I am finally free from the tyranny of her stupidity.

I can take this shit in, or leave it on her doorstep, where it belongs.

I will look at this vacation as a job I hate, but need to do. I’ll do a good job, I’ll get a good reference, I will tell her what she wants to hear, I will listen to her stupid, trivial bullshit, and three days later, I will be gone, and she will be no more the wiser that I hate her fucking guts.

Okay, this isn’t exactly forgiving – but its letting go, and moving on. 3 years ago

By seeing the ugliness in myself, I have managed to forgive my mother. I think I was so intent in never being anything like her – that I have trying to hard to pretend to be someone else. I’ve really had to face myself down here. Not easy, but worth it. I can see how and why I’ve been so hurt, and I also see that the world doesn’t revolve around me. Slowly, I am outgrowing my selfishness, and I guess other people also. I just don’t feel mad at her anymore, or guilty – which was the main source of my anger, now that I think of it. The guilt is bullshit, the judgement is bullshit. Realize that I have a right to be here, as myself, but I need to cut the crap. 3 years ago

Before I forgive anything, I find its really important to be clear about how I’ve been wronged, which is totally subjective in some cases and more general in others – but the goal in this accounting is and has to be forgiveness. At some point. For me, to forgive too soon is a mistake. The whole point is to grow.

I do forgive Jay, however, which really surprises me, and even more so because I can see how I really was in the wrong with that. I was a demanding asshole, really. I expected that guy to be at my beck and call – which is complete bullshit. Yes, he was a jerk. But that is really not the point. I can see how I really did need to change, and to grow the hell up. I was a self-centered, dependent idiot and my expectations of him were totally wrong and in keeping with my conditioning, which was totally wrong.

I don’t want to be this kind of person. I want to have something of value to add to a relationship. I want to grow up.

I really thought that he had wronged me horribly, and he did. But what the hell was I doing with guy? Why was I with him? Because – I wanted someone to take care of me, that’s why. Because I expected HIM to take care of ME. In other words, because I was a selfish twit.

I am really, really glad I am not that person anymore.

So far as forgiving my mother is concerned, I have no idea what that means right now.

Also, I don’t know if forgiveness is where you start, or where you end. If I didn’t decide to “forgive” Jay – I’d still be holding a grudge and would not have had the opportunity to reflect on my own behaviour, atitudes and assumptions.

I fear doing this with my mother, because I’ve been so crippled with guilt, so far as she’s concerned. I will give it a try, however. And my sister also… 3 years ago

I am forgiving, letting go, and moving on. But there is a lot of greif involved in this, that people rarely talk about, because – forgiving and moving on is also giving up on certain people, sometimes. And it is also a reckoning with some not very pleasant truths. I’m not getting into the specifics, but suffice to say, I’m letting go of a lot of lies, and a lot of distorted beliefs and opinions, about myself and about the world, that I was taught, and that I believed. I’m happy to let this shit go, and in some ways I have no choice, because I really can’t live under this cloud any longer. But doing so is not for weaklings, idiots, or fakes. 3 years ago

You know, I’m marking this file “closed” because – I’m going to be doing this for the rest of my life. I mean, this is how I am going to live. In my imagination I buried all my regret and bad behaviour and guilt in the ground and planted a tree. I said, I forgive myself for all this crap, and that’s it. If someone else wants to hold it over my head, let them, they are welcome to – but I’ve forgiven myself, and I’m not carrying that guilt anymore. And I’m serious. However hokey this all sounds, it’s as good as real. I also did the same thing with the significant other person who I think I similarly torment with guilt. I poured all of that in the ground, and I buried it. I planted a rose bush. I was in the bath at the time with my eyes closed, by the way. Anyway, it kept coming back, all that stuff – and I just kept reminding myself – forgiven, forgotten. That really is how it works and has to work. I’m going to keep doing this every day for the next two weeks, and at the end of that time, I’m marking this “done” 4 years ago

I really do carry a lot of guilt, and much of it is justified. I’ve hurt a lot of people, and objectively, I can’t say that I’ve contributed a great deal to the world in a positive sense. I don’t have the best character in the world. I’m spoilt and lazy, really, and very resentful and cowardly. I want to change, and I’m prepared for the challenge, but these are the facts. I’m really not a very well put together human being, at the moment. The further I move toward my goals, the more apparent this becomes, to me. Since starting my detox, I am really getting in tune with this rock of negativity, sadness, resentment – and yes, hate, I’m afraid – that is alive inside of me. I don’t know what to do with all this negativity. Maybe I’m just depressed. Or maybe I have to change my whole life and myself – which is somewhat depressing, but really is true.

I’m lucky that I can do this.
But I have a lot to let go, forgive and move on from 4 years ago

For me, forgiveness means totally reorientating my values. If I don’t forgive, I am bound to what I hate. If I do forgive, it means I am choosing to embrace the Good as I understand it, feel it. The hardest thing about being hurt, the real violation, in my mind – is the way it seperates you from a sense of goodness, trust, safety, and love. I’m not a God believer, at least not in the conventional sense of it, so forgiveness has been a difficult concept, and practice, to wrap my brain around. But I get it. This is about choice. It’s about choosing what I want and the direction I want to go in, and what I want to feel and be connected to. Forgiveness means letting go of the crap, and hanging onto the good. It really is the same thing, but it is very hard to hang onto the good and work toward it when you’re hanging onto the bricks. Forgiveness, for me, means setting these down, and moving forward. It means choosing love over pain and anger and confusion and fear. 4 years ago