"So tired. Won't make much sense. Dreaming of you. Always. You are still my heart, you always will be, and I miss you more than I can say."
I had passed out hard on the couch, unable to stay awake despite trying and despite the fact that it was still early enough to be strange. And I had dreamt. I'm sure I dream every night, as everyone does, but I never remember my dreams. I remembered these. I woke up desperately sad, on the verge of crying. He was on my mind again, as he always is, but the dreams were not happy dreams. He was breaking up with me. Again. And again. Even in my sleep, in my dreams, he hurts me and yet I cannot hate this man. I get angry, but it washes away with my tears and I'm just left sad, and missing him. There's no hate. I never blame him. I just search for answers.
What is forgiveness?
(I wish I could credit, but it's from Instagram and there was no author listed.)
I've always given chances. I give chances to people until I've been so thoroughly drained and hurt by them that I have no choice but to walk away. And even then, if they were to reach back out, I'd take their hand. I'm sure some see this as weakness. I'm sure he did. I see it as strength. I believe in people enough to continuously risk being hurt just to avoid walking away from someone who might need me, or who may be going through a rough patch, or who may just have been so hurt themselves that they don't know how to act any differently.
This is forgiveness. They don't need to ask for it, they don't need to explain themselves or promise that it will never happen again. I don't forgive for them - I forgive for me. It frees me to continue loving them. To continue believing in them. I can take that knife out of my own back and toss it away. There is freedom and strength in that act alone. Every time I forgive someone, I drop the weight that I would carry if I didn't. I give that wound a chance to heal, rather than bearing the knife forever. And in the process, I keep a friend, a family member, a lover... and hopefully I've also taught them something about forgiveness too.
So what is love?
Love is knowing someone's childhood dreams, their favourite book, where they used to hide as a child and where they go for solace as an adult. Love is looking at a person and seeing a universe in their face. Love is wanting to hold someone's hand forever. Love is wanting to protect their heart. Love is wanting every tiny moment, every big surprise, and every moment of pain. But most of all? Love is forgiveness. You can't have one without the other. If you can't forgive, then you can't love.
And maybe that's where our disconnect was, with me always willing to forgive and him never able to. While I fought to keep people in my life, he was constantly discarding them. He was always finding reasons why they were horrible, why they should be banished, why he could no longer associate with them. There were no chances, no hands held out, no forgiveness. And the more he lashed out, the more I held on. I believed that I could help heal him. I thought it was just hurt talking, that he didn't really believe anything he was saying. Except that it started to happen more frequently. And every time it happened, I tried to see where he was coming from. I fell into silence and let him rant. I hoped that it was just that. Venting, heat, anger. Until he turned it on me and broke my heart over something that he could not forgive me for.
And in a moment of anger, after multiple conversations with friends, I did something I have never done in 35 years. I took that knife out of my back and I used it. I told someone, someone that I love more than life, that I regretted meeting him. That he was never to contact me again. And it was a lie, and I regret it. I wish I could take it back. In that moment, I let anger grab hold and I let go of both forgiveness and love. I let go of who I am in the hopes that it would make me feel better. And you know what? It didn't. For the first time ever, I am struggling to forgive someone, and that someone is me.
So what is forgiveness, and what is love? It's a work in progress. It's making the best choice you can, learning from your mistakes, and always striving to make a better choice next time. It's hating the knife, not the person who used it. It's loving, even when it's hard and even when you know it won't change a thing. It's knowing that someone will never talk to you again for a single mistake, and still wishing that you could be there for them with arms wide open. That's forgiveness, and that's love. And you still have both babe.