Forgiveness

I had an interesting conversation recently while camping with friends, sitting around a campfire. I was talking about my mother and how, after having had the conversation I needed to have with her about how her views of my sexuality fucked with my head, my feelings of resentment were gone and our relationship moved on.

I was saying that I felt it was incredibly important in my own life, and maybe in others, to let things go. For almost purely selfish reasons, honestly. I don't believe in allowing past negativity to define my future, and in order to get to where I needed and wanted to be emotionally, I had to have a difficult, accusatory conversation with my mom. I'm not an accusatory sort of person, and if I'd had my druthers I'd have forgotten about it and moved on without needing a sense of closure (which is what I think forgiveness really is). 

And as soon as that conversation was done, my feelings toward what happened changed completely. It didn't require her apology (though I did receive that), it just required me having a venue to clear the air and state my thoughts and feelings clearly. That's it. And once done, it was done completely. I'd "forgiven" her, and that was that. And it was time for me to move on from that negativity.

I can see how forgiveness might be harder to give if one doesn't have the ability to confront ones aggressor. Or if it's yourself you need to forgive.

And I can see myself not living up to the ideal of not letting negativity rule my life and not forgiving certain things. But, I can also see being ok with that. Even taking some pleasure in it. There's a certain type of strength to be gained by the knowledge that there are unforgivable things in ones world. But I don't think I want to have them defined ahead of time. I think, if it came down to it and I couldn't forgive something, fine. But I don't want to have these ideas in my head of what I will and won't forgive. 

I don't know. It was an interesting conversation, and it made me think. It also made me sad, because none of my friends had been able to do the same thing. They seemed to think that what I had been able to do with my mother was somehow unusual. And that thought makes me sad.