If it doesn't honor me...forgiveness.

Forgiveness sounds sweet. Forgiveness is what's shoved down our throat when we are hurt, the cop out of "forgive and forget." I call bullshit. 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines forgiveness as "to cease to feel resentment against an offender." I am rolling my eyes just typing it out. 

Am I a lesser person because I have people that I will never let my resentment free from? Am I lesser because I will never let myself forget? Are my morals flawed? No. There are bad people in this world, who do bad things, who do not deserve a persons forgiveness. Forgiveness is too easy. Forgiveness is over-granted, overrated. Let me explain myself a bit. 

Will I forgive someone who cut too deep for stitches and so what remains there will heal into a darkened jagged scar? No. I will never give the grace of my forgiveness to people who do not deserve it. Good, you're sorry, you should be. But sorry doesn't put me back together. Sorry doesn't make the thoughts, or dreams stop. Sorry doesn't take it away. This is a bandaid over an artery and you want to give me a finger-painting in my own blood. Please, and I sincerely mean, go fuck yourself. 

Forgiveness is what we grant to ourselves. 

Forgiveness is the gasp when you finally lift your head above the water you've been drowning yourself in. Forgiveness is not getting dizzy when I pass the man who raped my blacked out body. Forgiveness is looking through the man who hit me without losing my step. Forgiveness of myself for realizing I am not at fault for others actions against myself. Why do I need to accept an apology when it doesn't raise my blood pressure anymore to hate you? And that's what forgiveness is to me, the power to hold hate against a person but not against myself. 

 

I forgive myself. I forgive myself for believing things were my fault, for believe words that have been spit at me. I forgive myself for hurting my body in punishment.

I am healing. I am covered in ugly jagged scarred skin from boys and old friends, but I've made a road map out of myself, a textured story book. A "feel this one here, this is where the love of my life told me I was a mistake, feel how sharp it is." But then I'll feel the lesson underneath, and I forgive myself for only seeing the scar, not the lesson. The roadmaps over my body have lead me to where and who I am now, if anything I have some strange form of gratitude for these people, but never forgiveness. I only hold this for myself. 

I hate people, but it doesn't dim my spirit, it doesn't keep me up at night anymore, it doesn't hold power over me. I cherish my power I have bestowed upon myself.