Hi, my name is Nisa. I want to share my self-reflection. The story is about forgiveness and letting go.
I assumed that people who are done with the denial phase would digest my story easier. Why? You will know it later, by yourselves. If it is still difficult for you to accept my words, perhaps you haven’t passed the phase, and that’s okay.
A heads up for you: we are all human. If you think that your feelings are difficult to be accepted by others, that’s okay. That is you. You know your process, and that process is meaningful.
Let’s start..
One of my friends said this afternoon, “it was nice memories, and let it be that way”. That person said it simply, but it left a deep meaning for me. Why?
I have a sad story which happened three-four years ago.
It started in 2011 when I fell in love with someone for the first time. Fortunately, it was reciprocal. We never had a breakup, even once for six years of relationship. Our friends appreciated and admired us. We were such a good team. We did lots of fun things, laughed together, had shared interests, had similar hobbies (cooking, house cleaning, reading a comic), and even similar perspective about humans process in life. We built our good memories along the process. We were also happy about that.
Then, in 2016, I made a big mistake. I chose to leave and honestly admitted that I was attracted to another person. I was mean? Absolutely, yes! I didn’t deny that I was mean, and it hurt me too until recently. I can’t lie to that person, and I told him even the little things. You can imagine how the openness rode my relationship with him. We had our own principle: we should express our love appropriately. It means that love isn’t limited to romantic actions and being honest, respectful, listening, and others. That was our way to love each other.
During that period, I ruin EVERY SINGLE THING in our relationship. I break all of those good memories by said: “Forgive me, I felt that my love for you isn’t as much as before. I want us to stop as I felt that staying with you isn’t right for us”. HAHAHA, bullshit. Yes, I was that wrongful.
Both of us were hurt. My choice hurt him, and it hurt me too. He overcame the wound by making new memories with another person. Then, me? I didn’t feel that hurt for the first four months, but then the pain struck me hard, for breaking someone that means a lot for me. We never contacted each other for five months since the breakup, and then we started communicating again. When it happened, the feelings were the same, but he was more open. He confessed that there were bad things that he had done when he was with me. It was so painful! I even said to myself, “I didn’t regret my choice to leave him; I am surprised because I was deceived.” I tried to forgive myself for all the self-blaming.
I blamed myself EVERY SINGLE DAY, and he came back with the fact that HE LIED TO ME. However, it was easier for me to let it go as we had no relationship. It was the past, and I wasn’t with him ain’t no more. Finally, I chose to start over slowly as my decision wasn’t fully wrong. How about him? Yeah, he lived his life while I distanced myself as I won’t getting trap anymore.
One of my closest ones I shared my story to (my current husband) said, “In some things, especially humans relationship, it should be a binary. Either 1 or 0.” The point is, it should be clear, yes or no; there is no in-between cause it might complicate things, especially feelings. Remember, the priority is our well-being. Give love to yourself first. That was the reason behind my courage to be stronger.
For more than one year, he and I didn’t communicate. We just said, “happy birthday, best wishes for you.” But then, few days before my wedding, he came. For what? It was to send me a good wish. We communicated longer than usual, and we learnt that we had ample great things for each other. It didn’t feel right if we 100% disappeared from each other though we created wounds. Behind those wounds, there were six good years. We were supportive and listened to each other. We chose to forgive ourselves and not repeating the same mistakes to our current beloved ones. We chose to forgive each wound as it contributes to who we are now. Did we still have feelings for each other? Of course, absolutely for a different portion.
Just like the proverb “One rotten apple will spoil the whole barrel”, a little awful thing could ruin lots of goodness. It is indeed true, but it always depends on our readiness to accept.
There is a possibility, when we are ready, a tiny wound would be forgiven because there are greater and sweeter things that could heal the wound.
