This is a story of how I gave an ex the forgiveness he doesn’t deserve. Or maybe I thought he didn’t. But, don’t we all deserve forgiveness?
We met when we were young. We instantly clicked and we felt the butterflies in our stomachs. Our love was beautiful and it stayed like that for many years. Until he told me it faded. That he never felt the same. Fight after fight. Reconciliation after each one. It was a never-ending loop. We were stuck in limbo and we didn’t know what to do.
To cut to the chase, he gave up. Long before I did. I fought for all the years we were together. I tried to patch things up as long as I could. I never saw his willingness to continue and so I gave him what he was asking for- freedom.
It was hard must I say. All the familiarity and routine, it was quite a hurdle for me. There were restless nights. There were times when I found myself waking up in the middle of the night and my pillow was drenched in tears. It was so difficult. I tried my best to ignore my desire to contact him and let him know I wasn’t okay. Silly, I even thought about getting hospitalized just so I would know if he’d come over and tell me it was nothing and that he would still want me. I was desperate. I hated myself. I hated that I was having a hard time with everything while I was seeing him painting the town red. I knew then that I had to give up not just him but everything we built because I knew he was no longer mine.
So I was left with no choice but to be fine. I was an empty can for a while. Loud. Hollow. Empty. Just nothing. I was miserable and lonely.
I wanna be happy again. I wanna feel love. I wanna feel that spark once more. Then realization dawned on me. I haven’t really forgiven myself for everything that it has gone through. In the process of finding peace, I lost myself to loneliness, heartbreaks, lies, broken promises, and pain. All of these kept on haunting me every day. I thought it was him who put me into this mess. It wasn’t him, it was me. I allowed myself to become like this. I allowed myself to wallow in tears and sorrow.
That’s when I learned to forgive. That’s when I stopped blaming him for everything that I have gone through. It was me all along. When I learned to forgive myself, everything became clear. And I was truly happy for the first time in a while.
