Forgivenesss
Jul. 8th, 2003 01:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beandelphikiSomeone on my friends list made a post about what forgiveness is. Several who have replied seem to have stated that "forgiveness is..." and then someone else disagrees with them.
IS there one right definition of forgiveness? Guess not. I suppose how you process an inflicted wound is individual.
Edit: Erm, triggering? Possibly? I'm not sure. I doubt it's that triggering, but just in case.
My understanding of forgiveness:
So, there was a teenage girl who sexually abused me when I was nine. Right? I've mentioned that before. And about 5, 6 years after that...I finally understood that this abuse didn't make ME a bad person, and that she had hurt me. I was furious. Beyond furious. Enraged all the time. I wanted to hurt her back, and I seriously contemplated finding her and beating her bloody. If I had been ABLE to find her again, I might have tried to do just that.
Then...one day...I realized I wasn't mad anymore. I just wasn't. It wasn't a conscious decision, or any process I was actually aware of. It just happened.
And when I thought about it, I realized why I wasn't mad. Before, I had only been seeing my own pain and the impact of the abuse on my life. But there were things I noticed and realized at the time that I had disregarded in my anger, and when the impact lessened, I had some time to examine them.
When she took me into her bedroom (and she only ever took me in there for one thing) she would put a chair under the doorknob. The first time she did that I (unknowingly) asked her why, and she replied that this locked the door, and said, "I do that to keep my brother and my dad out of my room at night."
...
It's this, and a few subtler things that brought me to the realization that she was very likely sexually abused herself. I knew little about her father, but from what I saw of him at the time, he frightened me more than my own (and that's saying something!) I think that, if anything, her home life was worse than mine by far.
And, understanding that, I don't care anymore that she hurt me. I didn't just decide not to care, but I realized that she was a kid, like me. A scared, abused kid. Like me. Her own individual way of responding to her abuse (becoming an abuser herself) is reprehensible, but that could have been me, if our situations were different.
I would support sending her to jail if she is still abusing children. Just because I have forgiven her for past actions toward me, does not mean that I think I have the right to either forgive her actions toward others or to not uphold the law. I believe that people who molest children should be locked up. Absolutely.
This is getting difficult to verbalize, so I'll end with the definitions people seem to be arguing in the other person's journal:
I did not forgive her because "letting go" will mean she no longer sucks up my energy. That is probably a wise thing to master, but I haven't.
And I did not forgive her, obviously, because I trust her again.
I forgave her because....ah-HA! I have it!...I felt like loving her. Yes, that's right. Loving her. (And I'm sure somebody out there reading this cringed in utter horror.) I don't love the person who abused me, but I love the little girl who got hurt so badly that the way she now deals with it is to hurt others. I look past the one who hurt me - she doesn't matter as much as the other one. And I am stronger than them both, and it is in my power to forgive them both, and lend my strength where it's needed. (In vain, since she'll never know, but there you go.)
It's like the theory in Ender's Game...the idea that once you understand someone, you cannot not love them.
I'm so, so, sorry she was hurt, because she showed me what it feels like. I only wish the best for her, and I hope she is no longer hurting children...for her sake and theirs. I know that's probably a foolish hope, but I hope all the same.
Mock that all you bloody well want.
IS there one right definition of forgiveness? Guess not. I suppose how you process an inflicted wound is individual.
Edit: Erm, triggering? Possibly? I'm not sure. I doubt it's that triggering, but just in case.
My understanding of forgiveness:
So, there was a teenage girl who sexually abused me when I was nine. Right? I've mentioned that before. And about 5, 6 years after that...I finally understood that this abuse didn't make ME a bad person, and that she had hurt me. I was furious. Beyond furious. Enraged all the time. I wanted to hurt her back, and I seriously contemplated finding her and beating her bloody. If I had been ABLE to find her again, I might have tried to do just that.
Then...one day...I realized I wasn't mad anymore. I just wasn't. It wasn't a conscious decision, or any process I was actually aware of. It just happened.
And when I thought about it, I realized why I wasn't mad. Before, I had only been seeing my own pain and the impact of the abuse on my life. But there were things I noticed and realized at the time that I had disregarded in my anger, and when the impact lessened, I had some time to examine them.
When she took me into her bedroom (and she only ever took me in there for one thing) she would put a chair under the doorknob. The first time she did that I (unknowingly) asked her why, and she replied that this locked the door, and said, "I do that to keep my brother and my dad out of my room at night."
...
It's this, and a few subtler things that brought me to the realization that she was very likely sexually abused herself. I knew little about her father, but from what I saw of him at the time, he frightened me more than my own (and that's saying something!) I think that, if anything, her home life was worse than mine by far.
And, understanding that, I don't care anymore that she hurt me. I didn't just decide not to care, but I realized that she was a kid, like me. A scared, abused kid. Like me. Her own individual way of responding to her abuse (becoming an abuser herself) is reprehensible, but that could have been me, if our situations were different.
I would support sending her to jail if she is still abusing children. Just because I have forgiven her for past actions toward me, does not mean that I think I have the right to either forgive her actions toward others or to not uphold the law. I believe that people who molest children should be locked up. Absolutely.
This is getting difficult to verbalize, so I'll end with the definitions people seem to be arguing in the other person's journal:
I did not forgive her because "letting go" will mean she no longer sucks up my energy. That is probably a wise thing to master, but I haven't.
And I did not forgive her, obviously, because I trust her again.
I forgave her because....ah-HA! I have it!...I felt like loving her. Yes, that's right. Loving her. (And I'm sure somebody out there reading this cringed in utter horror.) I don't love the person who abused me, but I love the little girl who got hurt so badly that the way she now deals with it is to hurt others. I look past the one who hurt me - she doesn't matter as much as the other one. And I am stronger than them both, and it is in my power to forgive them both, and lend my strength where it's needed. (In vain, since she'll never know, but there you go.)
It's like the theory in Ender's Game...the idea that once you understand someone, you cannot not love them.
I'm so, so, sorry she was hurt, because she showed me what it feels like. I only wish the best for her, and I hope she is no longer hurting children...for her sake and theirs. I know that's probably a foolish hope, but I hope all the same.
Mock that all you bloody well want.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-08 09:13 am (UTC)And remember that I said that one of the components that I *must* have, to let go of something, is understanding. I don't understand why this particular person felt it was okay to hurt me -- okay, I understand it intellectually, it's his pattern, but I don't understand why he did it on a gut level, because I don't understand how anyone would follow that pattern and not go insane after a while.
And that's probably what's blocking me from being able to let go. I just don't understand how he can't know what it's done to me and is still doing to me, and of course I have no way to find out....