Forgiveness

When I was young, forgiveness came easily. If someone apologized, they were sorry. They were repenting. They genuinely felt bad about whatever they did. So I forgave them, and it was easy to move on. And if it happened again? Forgiveness would still be given for an apology. However, as I have grown and come out of my naivety of youth, forgiveness has become harder. Not because I have been hurt by so many people. But because I have been hurt so many times by the same people. Because I give them my forgiveness and they continue to do things to hurt me over and over and over. So it has hurt other people in my life by making me distrustful and less than forgiving when *they* make mistakes. It has made me bitter and unhappy. But. Now as I am older and I recognize that there are pieces of my general unhappiness that are connected with poisonous and hurtful people, I have taken to doing something I could never fathom as a child. Cutting those poisonous people from my life. I never wanted to tell someone I didn't want to be their friend. Or I didn't love them. Or I didn't want to ever see them again or be around them or anything that would make them feel like less of a person. I never wanted to hurt anyone the way I had been hurt by being told, in so many words and ways, that I wasn't worthy of their time and energy. But there is a quote from my favorite show, Scrubs, that holds the feeling I have begun to adopt. "You can't even take care of a single patient unless you learn how to take care of yourself first." Like I said, the other people in my life, the people who don't hurt me constantly, suffer when I try to care for the poisonous people in my life. Because I am suffering, they suffer. And that's not okay. It is the opposite of what I want for the people in my life. So I'm taking care of myself first now. I can count on one hand the number of people I have cut out of my life and have been happy to do so because it took a load off of my shoulders and let me breathe again. 1) My ex-stepmother 2) My ex's crazy ex 3) The girl who tore apart my team at work 4) The ex who was never sorry 5) The ex who was always sorry This is the order in which they were dropped from my life. It was hard at first, but it is easier now that I recognize when people are not good for me. I don't hold onto their memories out of bitterness (well, maybe the last 2, because they are so fresh, but I'm working on it). I hold onto their memories as a reminder that sometimes I have to walk away from people for my own good. I don't want to become poisonous to the other people in my life. I want to lift them up and make them genuinely happy, the way the do with me.