(Nimue)
I've spent most of my life feeling that forgiveness should come from the other person. That makes sense if you've knowingly wronged someone else for no good reason. However, messing up can take many forms. We can hurt people by accident all too easily. We can be blamed for things that weren't our fault. I don't think anyone should have to carry that forever. There are people who use blame as a control tactic to keep others down. If you've been made to feel unforgiveable as part of an abuse process then forgiving yourself is an important part of healing.
Did you mean to cause harm? If you did, was there a reason? Was what you did necessary for some other reason? Apologising, explaining and trying to rebalance things can get a lot done. If you had to let someone down because of some other important commitment, for example, that doesn't make you a terrible person. We can't magically know what the consequences of our choices will be, even when we're trying hard to get everything right.
No one should be blamed for genuine mistakes and accidents. Even if you can't persuade the other person that you meant no harm, you can put this down on your own account. The important thing with mistakes is to learn from them and not repeat them. The person who declines to learn is, at some point, not making mistakes but is acting carelessly, and is therefore responsible for the ham they do.
The hardest of these to unpick is where you've been blamed or made responsible as a deliberate tactic to hurt and limit you. When the process is deliberate, it's often also subtle and hard to spot. When nothing you do is ever good enough, that will grind you down. Being reacted to in disproportionate ways is a really nasty form of gaslighting. Having the other person behave as though you've been aggressive or unreasonable when you haven't can damage your relationship with reality. Whether that comes from deliberate intentions to hurt, or someone acting out of their own trauma, it is a very damaging thing to experience.
It took me a long time to realise that a person reacting to me like I'd attacked them did not mean I'd done anything wrong. I spent years trying to get this right – speaking softly, avoiding accusation, avoiding anything that could be interpreted as blame, trying to stay calm – when I was in distress and needed that taking seriously. Inevitably at some point I'd crack under the strain, and that regularly took me into self-harming. Asking to be treated in ways that would allow me to function is not a form of attack. Being reacted to like it was persuaded me over time that I was something irrational, unreasonable, monstrous even.
For me, the process of self-forgiveness is a slow one. I'm not there yet, and I still have a lot of anxiety to unpick. I could not have tried harder, because there was no amount of trying that would have been good enough. In the last eighteen months I've been told that I'm easy to be around, that what I want makes sense and is easy to accommodate. Apparently I'm not unkind, or aggressive, or inconsiderate. When I'm allowed the things that I thought I needed all along, my mental health is pretty stable, and my physical health is better. Step by step I've learned to trust the evidence of my own body in all of this.
I did not mean to be a monster. I was not intending to cause harm. Sometimes I was so distressed that I could not force myself into reassuring and untroubling shapes. These are not, I have decided, terms on which I need to hate and mistrust myself. I don't have to second guess my every move and motive. I don't have to be hypervigilant for fear of getting things terribly wrong.
Healing makes me a better person – there's no two ways about it. Feeling better in myself, I am calmer. My not suffering makes me easier to be around. Having what I need puts me in a much better position to function day by day. When I was riddled with anxiety, I wasn't easy to deal with – not a monster, just someone who was struggling. My being happy is something that can lift others, and enables me to get more done.
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