How do you forgive someone who isn’t sorry? Forgiveness, after all, is a selfish endeavor. It is saying “I will no longer hold on to the bitterness and in this I release any power you have over my emotions.” This isn’t always about letting them back into your space, but rather having the ability to let them go, while being okay with that. Not everyone is meant to stay in your life forever.

Now tell me, how do you forgive someone who has spent your whole life treating you like an inconvenience? How do you learn to let go of that anger that has become so embedded into your very DNA, without also tearing yourself apart? Is it possible to strip down these strands to single nucleotides and remove the ones that don’t suit the person you wish to be?

I want to live a life of my own accord, but your contribution to my existence is something that holds me back. It is a bitterness that grips my heart in an icy grasp. It is an anger that shatters against the wall. It is a voice that seeks comfort in loud contrast. It is holding on to someone who treats me poorly, because how could I ever know anything different from the example you set?

Forgiving you will be an act of rebellion against my own heart, because I no longer wish for my driving force to be the anger that has built up inside. I want a heart filled with happiness and content. I want to let someone in that has the desire to be by my side. No longer do I wish to hold on to someone out of love. It must have mutual respect and equal effort for me to stay.

I may forgive you and drop the topic, but that doesn’t mean I want you back in my life. I’ve come to see, that once something has been broken, it can be impossible to piece back together. The cracks will always be there and it will never be the way it used to be. Perhaps that is for the best, and we learn to live with it.

In this I have learned that you reach an age when you realize each and every person has a different perspective on life. They are looking at the world with a different set of eyes and see things in ways you couldn’t possibly fathom. People are changing every second of every day. So how can we judge them based on how they respond to the world around them? This is why, in order to heal, we must learn how to forgive. Accepting that, as human beings we are all flawed and make mistakes, hurting people we once cared about.  Letting go of the ones that no longer serve to help us develop as people is how we keep growing.