Originally posted by mastersgem:
Sorry ash but I don't believe all people Should be forgiven
No need to apologise.

I spoke of forgiveness because that is what denu spoke about. For some people forgiving is part of letting go. If she wants to forgive, who am I to tell her she is wrong.

This is something I struggle with in my own abuse. Forgiveness is something I have tried in the past, and as many times as I've given it, I have taken it back just as many.

So for many years I thought I couldn't forgive. In fact I went totally the other way with my feelings of hatred growing. It really ate away at me.

One thing that hatred did give me was a feeling of power. That powerful hate fueled all kinds of fantasies which became darker and darker over time. I got to the point where I became depressed and fixated on the hate. It got so bad I began living inside of a fantasy that described in great detail everything I wanted to do to the woman that abused me.

It was just like walking around in my own story. The lines between reality and fantasy became so blurred that I ran from the police when, in the real world, they were not after me. In my fantasy they had found me out, so I ran.

That was scary but I didn't pull back until I became suicidal. Then I realized I couldn't hold the hate. Forgiving wasn't working and neither was ignoring it (had a nasty habit of popping back up all the time), but then neither was holding on to the hate.

Shortly after that I remembered reading an article about letting go. There is no judgement, no counting the cost in it. We acknowledge what happened, and that it happened to us, and release it. In the releasing the event has no further control over us. It happened, and we acknowledge that, but do not allow it into our lives.

It cannot eat at us that way. We move on with life. In letting hate control us, we ultimately allow our abusers to continue influence over us. To be absolutely free of them we have to find a place where we can let go.

If denu wants to take the next step to forgiveness I will never discourage her. She has a beautiful heart. If it is something she needs to do, I will not stand in her way or discourage her in any way.

As an interesting aside, I read an article once where a victim forgave her victimizer in open court. She told him she could not hold on to hate and had to let it go. She that she cannot let the event in question rule her life.

She also acknowledged that she knew her attacker would stew over it, and continue to think about it, but she was not going to let him rule her life any longer.

Her attacker was shocked. During the trial he had been leering at her every chance he got and reveled in that fact that his attention was discomforting to her. Now he was relegated to the status of a nobody. She was going to go on with her life free of him, but allow him no more control over her.

He shouted and yelled obscenities at her trying to get a reaction, all to no avail. All those years in prison he was going to spend as a nobody, and he was going to prison for a very long time.


gem, maybe you just are not ready to let go, or forgive, your wound is still bleeding.