The Thing About Forgiveness, aka Indefinite Hiatus

As the new mom of an amazing little girl, I’ve reached a point where I need, more than anything else, to protect myself, and my family, and my heart. And to do that, I'm going on a blogging and internet interaction hiatus. Very specific things have happened that have made me feel completely violated, disrespected, and broken, and left me wondering why I bother hoping that people around me will respect me, my family, and my decisions. And no, I will not be airing any dirty laundry in public (at least until we need to be sunning diapers and it’s warmer than 46 degrees outside, but we all know that’s not the sort of laundry I mean).

But there’s a lot of work I need to do toward forgiveness before I can even think about going back to saying things publicly—here, on facebook, on message boards, anywhere. I simply need to manage the things that I can manage and keep out the toxicity that I cannot handle. My energy needs to go elsewhere—to Michael, Mari, and my own self and self work.

Forgiveness has to be part of that work, and I have to recognize that it’s only going to happen on its own time. It’s not just work, but hard work. I’m sure there’s a labor or nursing metaphor in there somewhere, but I haven’t slept for more than three consecutive hours since the 4^th, so literary technique will have to wait.

I’m grateful that I go into this knowing that forgiveness is work. It’s difficult to think, examine myself, be conscious of my own role in the situation. It’s also difficult to think about why and how I was hurt so badly without giving into the rage that is so close at hand to pain.

More than that, though, I’m grateful that forgiveness is a solo activity, or if you believe in a God/dess , a two-party journey. It doesn’t require anything of the person who hurt me so badly. It’s somewhere I have to get myself, by myself. Forgiveness simply means that I will stop carrying around this giant sack of emotional rocks and move to a place where the pain no longer consumes or defines me at any point in my day. It means getting through this, learning something, and leaving it behind, as part of my past from which I will grow. It does not mean forgetting. It does not mean pretending particular behaviors and attitudes are ever acceptable. It does not mean pretending things are okay. It does not mean I will forget. There are no connotations of trust, or relational healing, or interpersonal re/connection.

Those things require reconciliation. That’s different. That requires actual apology that does not end in “but;” true apology that does not offer self-centered explanations that seek to minimize my feelings, experience, and subjectivity; genuine apology that does not attempt to make me see things from the point of view of the source of my hurt. It requires that someone take him/herself out of his/her own viewpoint and empathize in order to understand how and why s/he hurt another person, and to genuinely regret that hurt and work to prevent doing something like it again. There is no “but I just…” in reconciliation, any more than there is “well I’ll just carry around this one rock just in case I need to throw it…” in forgiveness. Reconciliation cannot start with me, because if it does, it will be read as accusatory, judgmental, punishing, and damaging, and I don’t want any of those things. I just want to live my life and love my family, respected by the people around me, without people trying to change me or my mind, tell me why I’m wrong, or why I should be more like them.

And that’s the thing about forgiveness. It’s an integral part of reconciliation, but it doesn’t require reconciliation. Forgiveness, when I can finally accomplish it, means that I don’t need reconciliation, however much I may wish it would happen. It means that I never need to hear “I’m sorry.” because I will have seen my world change twice—once because of the injury, and once because of forgiving it. I don’t know what that twice-changed state will look like for me. I don’t know how Michael and I will balance obligation with protection and sanity, and I don’t know how I’ll go about my life when I’m not carrying this big bag of hurt. But I do look forward to the day when I no longer cry every time I think about it, when I can go back to talking with people I love and not fearing betrayal and selfishness, when I can go back to being more of the self I want to be. There’s promise there, and hope, and I’m going to go work on myself and my family, and focus on that promise and hope.