Forgive and Forget

With the wedding planning under control for now, I could finally sit back and relax a bit and clean up all those e-mails from friends and family.

Joe and I had a discussion on forgive and forget last weekend. He is an overly forgiving person and I, on the other hand, is at the other end of the spectrum. Funny that I came across a friend's blog last night and coincidently she wrote about forgiveness as well. This made me wonder if being overly forgiving is a good thing or not.

Friends who know me well enough all know that my world is black and white, and there is no grey area. I openly admit that I have reservations in forgiving people. I take my time slowly to reason and reflect. I am worried that by forgiving someone, it implies that I am actually giving this person permission to repeat the same behaviour again.

I believe in confrontation. I always think that this is the only way to closure, which then leads to forgive and forget. I am a brutally honest person, and I do not sugar-coat anything. We are all adults and we should all be responsible for our own actions.

All my close friends and family know that something awful happened last February, and it has been bothering me ever since. It seems that my memory is so good that I have a hard time letting go. I admire people who can claim short term memory loss to block out bad memories, and at the same time, get away with what they did. I was hurt to my core, and began to doubt the foundations of human relationship, existence of respect and dignity among people. Should relationship be based on long term manipulation, threatening and lies? My world was simple yet peaceful leading to this event, and things changed drastically and my world was shaken to its core. For about a month, I could not find stability and harmony in my world. I was helpless, confused, scared, terrified, disappointed, frustrated and furious.

For the last 12 months, I was searching for clues, explanations and answers to what happened. To me, it was a long journey to self-discovery. I discovered that some people do shoot the messenger when the truth and reality is delivered. I discovered that some people do live in the world of denial. I discovered that some people are masters of manipulation. I discovered that some people are capable to turn the situation around, from being at fault to being a victim. I discovered that this world is far from being perfect. I also discovered the ugliest side of the human race.

Forgiving someone is also a way of letting the past go. I agreed with what my friend wrote on her blog. I find it extremely difficult to forgive someone who does not ask for it, and even harder to forgive those who think that they are not at fault, and they do not need forgiveness in the first place.