forgive people who have hurt me

6 years ago, almost to this day, I met a boy who I was smitten with… He was charming and intelligent, had great taste in music, and taught me to drive stick shift, a near-impossible task. My crush turned into one of the best friendships I’ve ever had – finally, a person who really got me, a soulmate if there is such a thing in this world.

2 years ago, he moved to Brooklyn, and I felt forgotten. No phone calls, no emails, no mixtapes of random indie-emo-techno-pop. I went to visit, it wasn’t the same, we had a fight. All of his new friends weren’t like me. Some of them weren’t even like him.

When he decided to come back, I was overjoyed. We picked up where we had left off. We were instant friends once again.

This summer, his heart led him back to Brooklyn again, and this time, seemingly more permanently. Brooklyn has this power to silence him in my life. The unanswered phone calls hurt. They hurt like hell. I miss my friend.

I realize in these past entries, I’ve merely been listing the people I need to forgive. Now I need to work on letting the forgiveness come…

I’m really struggling with this because I feel like I’m in this endless cycle of people disappointing me or hurting me or betraying me, and then having to work to forgive them, and then the cycle repeating again.

Is it even worth it?

Things have been tense and awkward with a friend of mine who hurt my feelings and I was getting angrier and angrier because she was avoiding me.

So today I messaged her (I would’ve called, but I wanted to give her a chance to think about what I said and respond) and said I hoped I hadn’t done something to offend her, but it seemed like she was avoiding me.

So she responded and said that she was the one who had offended me (true) and that she wasn’t sure how to approach me.

So, the lines of communication are open and we’ll see where this leads.

I also messaged the dude who’s been avoiding me. Apparently I am a scary person whom people avoid rather than figure out. But I’m trying.

I had two best friends in high school. One of them is still my sister – we stay in touch and visit whenever we can, even though we’re miles apart. The other is lost to me – she’s cut off all contact, even though we’re in the same city.

I thought I had stopped missing our friendship, but then I heard through the grapevine of small hometown gossip that she’s getting married this summer… and I won’t be there, and it hurts, damn it.

How do you forgive someone who probably doesn’t care if she’s forgiven? How do I get her to forgive me?

Whenever I start to think, “I hate you, you ruined me,” I’m going to instead think, “I love you.” I would rather love than hate.

I feel so silly, holding onto the hurt feelings, holding onto the loving feelings. He’s moving across the country and there’s a good chance that I won’t see him for a long, long time, if I ever do again (not counting myspace and facebook and blogs and email; face-to-face is much different than online communication).

I’m sad today, not resentful. I’m sad for what we had and what we might have continued to have, but I’m not blaming him, at least not today. I’m just going to be sad today and be okay with that.

He told me he missed me and that he missed being friends, except he really makes no effort.
So today I reached out, at least a little. Being friendly.

I feel okay about it.

1s are resentful. We tend to repress our anger, but hold onto it.

I alluded to this last night after dinner, that I’m working through some forgiveness issues.

Perhaps I should do less talking about it and more doing it.

This month’s YogaJournal has a feature about forgiveness, and it couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

I find it so hard to forgive him, and I want to. Not for him, not because he deserves my forgiveness, but because I’m so tired of feeling weighed down by my anger and bitterness. I want to forgive him so I can move on, so I can be open to other people.

I don’t want to live my whole life thinking of some mistake I made when I was a kid, knowing that I could have just forgiven whoever hurt me, or I hurt, when I could just forgive them or ask for forgiveness.