Letting Go (Part One: Forgive and Never Forget)

I remember very few things about my grandmother.  She passed when I was very young, and my memories of her are beginning to slip away with time.  The ones I do remember are just bits and pieces, here and there.  Trying to recall them is like trying to describe the way a room looks just by peering through the keyhole.  But I thought of her last week.  I thought of one of the things I remember her saying: 

"Forgive and forget."

Now, that was not the last time I heard that phrase.  Over the years, I've heard friends say it nonchalantly after you tell them that a person has let you down.  I've heard parents tell it to their children after a scuff with their siblings.  I've even heard pastors preach it from the pulpit, as if God commanded it himself.  A quick Google search will reveal that everyone from Oprah to WebMD condones forgiving and forgetting.  I've heard this American colloquialism so many times over the years, that I accepted it as truth.  I accepted it as law.  Until last week...

...when my ex-girfriend got engaged. 

Oh, no... this is not one of those posts is it? I'd like to think it's at least a little different.

Honestly, at first, it didn’t bother me. Then came a slight irritation. Then something more. After the news spread a little further, I received plenty of (mostly wanton) texts and messages ranging from “concerned for me” to the “defensive of her.”

I guess before I go any further, I could give everyone a short history lesson:

Unbeknownst to me, the four years that we were together, she brought things into my life that I had never experienced within a relationship. She filled my life with lying and cheating and hiding- things dealing with deep, scarring matters of the heart- none of which I was really aware of until it was too late.  There was lying... lying about the little things. Things a normal person would find odd to lie about.  There was cheating.  Physically cheating will sting, and it did, but nothing hurts more than emotional unfaithfulness; knowing someone is hearing words that should be only for your ears, sharing moments that should only be in your memories.  And there was hiding.  Every person hides a piece of themselves.  But no one should hide the whole of who they are, not if they care about the other person.  Not if they're in love.  Any relationship is bound to have its ups and downs, but I was led to believe that the person living life right in front of me was someone that they were not.  Imagine sharing every part of your life with a single person, and then looking across the room one day only to see a stranger where your best friend once was.  To clarify, this wasn't an on-again, off-again relationship; this was an already-planned-the-wedding-down-to-the-type-of-napkins relationship.  Please understand, I had a ring for 6 months before we broke up. The only thing that kept it off of her finger was that I didn't have a peace about proposing; a gut feeling that led me to believe something was wrong.  Some people considered me naïve.  Some people thought that it was worse, that I was choosing to ignore the signs, burying my head in the sand. 

But my close friends and family understood.  Those are not the values my parents instilled in me.  That’s not how I believe love is supposed to go.  Love trusts.  Love looks over faults.  Love does crazy things.  Love is not jealous.  Love doesn’t pick you apart.  I’m paraphrasing some Bible verses there, but those are things about love that I truly believe.  An older gentlemen once told me, "the heart fills in the blanks that the mind leaves."  It took me forever to understand what he meant, but I finally got it.  You tell me you're going to the market to buy apples, and you come back smelling like cigarettes and without apples; my mind tells me that you lied, but my heart says maybe not.  My heart says that maybe you didn't get to go to the market because you gave an elderly smoker a ride home, performing your good deed for the day.  The heart will believe the most unlikely of scenarios.  The heart will keep hope alive in the most desolate of places.  But... that's what happens when you're like me.  I was raised to love hard.  I was raised to trust deep.  That's the way my granddad loved my grandmother. That's the way my dad loves my mom.  That part of me will never change.

Forgive and forget...

My father raised me on biblical principles.  Regardless of whether you think that a comforting or scary thought, the Bible is usually where I turn first to get answers.  Imagine my surprise last week when I pulled out the good book and scoured its pages for the origin of this lifelong formality.  

Not one mention.  Not one.

Don't mistake what I am trying to convey.  Forgiveness is a very common word throughout the Bible.  In fact, the concept of forgiveness is a cornerstone to almost all faiths.  Maybe an atheist would even agree that the practice of forgiveness is a healthy for the self.  I don't think we as humans would have survived this long without it.  Forgive and forgive often.  It is this man-born concept of "forgetting" that I found to be absent...

There's a well known saying that states, "those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it."  Don't look for that phrase in the Bible, you won't find it there.  But I think this particular idiom is a great reason why "forgiving and forgetting" is a rule I will no longer live by.  It is impossible to forget.  We're not computers; there is no delete button.  The most tragic events are seared into our memories, whether we want them there are not.  The good news is, so are our most wonderful ones.  Should you spend your time dwelling on the past?  Absolutely not.  The more time you spend looking backwards, the more impossible it becomes to move forward.  But you cannot forget where you've been. You must not forget where you've been.


I'll leave you with a visualization that may sum up the whole of this post: 
Think of a scar.  A scar represents a wound that has been healed, yet its mark will always be there.  It can't be removed.  It can be covered, but eventually, it will resurface.  A scar no longer causes pain, but it is a reminder of a mistake made.  It is a reminder of what not to do.  A scar cannot form where one already exists.  And a scar may not be in your daily thoughts, but if you think about it, you know it's there.  And more importantly, you know how it got there.  A scar is part of who you are now.  A scar is part of whatever you will become. 

I forgive her... I honestly do.  But I can't forget.



I can let go of the bitterness, but I can't forget how it got there.
I can let go of the pain, but I can't forget who caused it.
I can move forward, but I can't forget where I've been.

The wound is healed. The scar remains.