I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a lot lately, mostly because I feel that I should offer it to someone close to me. But that old saying about not being able to forgive if we can’t forget rings true. And I can’t forget.
A close friend and I have been on a break for a few months. I’m not going to divulge the details of our hiatus here, partially because I’m fairly sure it would get back to her (if she’s not reading this herself), and also because it’s not important. She and I agreed that if we were going to reconvene as friends, we would do so with a fresh start – putting the past behind us and moving forward with new attitudes towards each other and the lives we lead.
I miss her terribly. I have dreams about calling her and telling her that I’m ready to try again, and I regularly find things that I know would make her laugh but can’t share with her because of this separation. The ball is in my court, and I know that I could mend things at any time. But I can’t forget.
I can’t stop being angry at her for things she’s done or said, or things her friends have done or said to me that she has condoned (or at least not explicitly condemned). I also feel that I’ve been pushed out of her life, and look at this hiatus as a way of taking that decision under my control – a sort of “you can’t fire me because I’m quitting” approach.
I don’t want to quit. But I also don’t want to compete. With the distance, with the friends she’s known since high school who seemingly dislike me for no reason, with the vast differences in our personalities and lifestyles and future plans. I want to live my life without judgment, free of negativity and fleeting comments made in jest that make me feel as though I’m eight years old again and being admonished by my second grade teacher for being a very bad girl.
I may just need more time, and I’ll continue to take it until I decide otherwise. But I don’t know how I’ll make that decision. And maybe I won’t be able to. Maybe I’ll be stuck in friendship purgatory forever.
Even if you are in friendship purgatory forever, it has a way of floating slowly on the waves so that you don’t even notice you’re moving, and then eventually it settles on a shoreline and you look around and are like, “Oh. Uh… when exactly did we get HERE?”
Maybe that’s not helpful, but I like to think it is at least a little, because over time things have a way of settling on their own. Not settling as in “resolving,” necessarily, but settling as in the way shells find homes on the beach. It eventually has to find a place to rest.
And a lot of times (at least I’ve found), once you realize the shore is steadier underneath and you pause to look at where you’ve come from, you’ll find that forgiveness isn’t so hard. That forgetting may not be entirely possible, but that when you DO remember, it’s few and far between and it doesn’t sting as much as it used to. Distance and age have given you perspective, and you see more plainly whether or not pursuing that friendship is feasible.
Not that I WANT you to float in purgatory forever, because that definitely sucks. I’m just sharing how some of my own experiences have gone. After a while, the pain seems to be so silly. You look at it and it’s like, “how did that ever hurt me that badly? why was that even an issue? I’m so done with that.” Hopefully you do find a common ground there; fights and break ups with friends are the worst, so I know how awful that is. But time at least brings perspective, if not healing.
I hope this made sense. I feel kind of like it’s stupid.
I understand what you’re saying, though your metaphor sort of makes me wonder what you’ve been smoking