Forgiving Yourself Isn’t Easy, But You Need To Give Yourself A Second Chance
Not everyone deserves a second chance. But one’s self deserves one.
He left you hanging. He left you waiting for that thoughtful 1 am text message that never came. He left you cold, writhing in pain, gnashing your teeth at the unfair twist of events that gave him a new girlfriend, and you, a new heartbreak. He left you, oblivious to the pedestal you built around the perimeter of your heart and soul. He left you, oblivious to the trades you made with the devil, to the vows of not falling within the traps, Venus made to your love life. He left you.
But you left yourself to the ruins of that love, as well.
You left yourself to those pitiful crying-to-sleep sessions, and 12pm drinking-tequila routines. You left yourself to loathing those couples cuddling in public parks, making-out in the libraries. You left yourself to curse your personality, your childhood stories, your favorites, your interests — you somehow believe that he found something offensive in your life, just like how a customer finds a strand of hair in his ramen. You left yourself to the rotting of your soul, to the decaying of your zest for life, of your passion for love.
You left yourself to die a slow, painful death. Slowly, the issue involved deviates from him leaving you, to you, killing yourself.
You cannot find any reason to get up in the morning. You cannot explore any reason to believe that someday you’ll find another person who’ll make you realize why it did not work out with him. You cannot discover any reason why it’ll be wrong to believe that you will be alone forever, your uterus will be of no use, your surname will never become a “mother’s maiden name”, your hymen will not be broken. You became the skeptic you’ve always been skeptical you will become.
But you do not deserve this. And to tell you the truth, neither does he.
You have the right to lash out, to scream at the world, to cry endlessly, to curse everyone, to wish bad omen to all people. No one will ever have the right to question you why you wake up every day with a tear on your face and with hatred in your heart. No one will ever have the right to ask why you cannot pick up your broken pieces, because all of them are also too broken to interfere. No one will ever have the right to question you, but yourself.
You do not have the right to ruin yourself. You do not have the right to stab your dreams and visions in the back, and twist the knife ever so slightly. You do not have the right to impale and paralyze yourself in this already disabled world. Do not say that it’s your life and you can do whatever you want with it. Baby, do not ruin the only one human left siding with you.
It sounds too cliché to consistently listen to other people’s preaches about self-mend, and self-help after out-of-this-world heartaches and pains. But among all the too-cliché things in these preaches, there is a hidden truth and revelation about the reality of pain and life — you only got and have yourself. Do not say that your other half was taken away by him and you cannot do this alone. It was not taken — you just buried it, for the experience of a supposed more spontaneous life with him around. You are not the half of a whole; you are THE whole.
So why hurt the only one person that still sticks with you?
And him. You do not have the right to consistently imprison his ghost to the dreamland of your mind. Yes, he touched your life, he brought something new to your palate, only the two of you can taste and experience. But the best revenge does not come in throwing away that taste and forgetting it; the best revenge comes in keeping the bitterness and transforming it into something sweet and sour. The best revenge comes not in forgetting, but in living in the memory and in being altered by it.
You do not necessarily forgive, but you accept and you try to realize. You stop asking “why” and you begin saying “okay”.
Forgive yourself, not because you want to move on and forget, but because you are far too precious to mourn for the memories of someone who cannot grasp your magnanimity, and to delay the adventures and milestones you will be making in the future, this time around, with most cherished person in your life — you.