Forgiving Ourselves

Forgiveness is hard.  It’s difficult to forgive someone who has wronged you.  But it’s even more difficult to forgive ourselves for wronging someone else.

Among my friends, I am often a confidant, a listening ear, someone who will hear a person’s story and won’t judge.  It has also been a component of the jobs I’ve worked in over the years.  And over all those years, through all those stories, I’ve heard from a lot of people who are unable to forgive themselves.

I think that if we wrong someone, we are far less likely to forgive ourselves than we are if someone wronged us.  And I don’t know why that is.  Is it perhaps because we expect more of ourselves?  But why would we expect so much more of ourselves than we do of anyone else?

I wonder if it has to do with the phrase “forgive and forget.”  I think that after the process of forgiving, it’s easy to forget that someone else did something wrong — but if it’s something we did, we have to forever live with the memories.  How often do we cringe at a sudden recurrence of a memory that we’re ashamed of?  And then, sometimes, those memories play on auto-loop or auto-repeat in our mind and we just dig ourselves deeper into a hole of depression and anxiety, and we tell ourselves that we will never forgive ourselves for what we did.

Sometimes it’s not even a big thing.  Sometimes it can be a small error in our judgement, but an error that we thought we were above making, and an error we have difficulty accepting that we’ve done.

But I’m still hung up on the fact that if someone else did that wrong to us — if they made that same slip in judgement — we might hurt for a bit, but the hurt would heal, we’d learn to forgive that person, and, with time, we would forget the hurt and move on with our lives.  But we are unable to do that to ourselves.

I’m still bothered by things I said and did in high school.  I was generally a quiet introvert with his nose in a Star Trek book, but I’ve been rude to a few people over the years.  They probably don’t even have the slightest memory of me being rude — they probably only remember me as the quiet nerd who was always nice.  Yet if I think back on my high school years, all that really stands out are those few incidents I’m embarrassed to remember.

During my first go-through of university, I took a recurring summer job that involved lots of public speaking (and singing, and dressing like a giant blue dog sometimes).  And after university, I took on a different position that, again, involved a lot of public speaking.  And in that position, I had to sometimes work with other people that were going to speak in front of crowds.  While I’d become comfortable with it, it still terrified everyone else I was working with.  So I gave them one piece of advice — people tend to forget speakers who are spectacularly bad, but remember those who are spectacularly good.  The lesson in that?  Don’t worry about a disastrous attempt at public speaking — the embarrassment will quickly fade and people will only remember the good parts of your speaking turn.

I think the same goes for memory in general.  People are much more likely to remember the good qualities about us and let the bad fall into the dustbin in the back of their minds.  So when we wrong someone, when we hurt them, eventually they return to having mostly or only positive feelings of us, or at least neutral feelings.  (If we hurt them spectacularly badly, then that process might take a much longer time, but it will usually happen.)

But the hardest person to earn that forgiveness from is ourselves.  We need to take a lesson from those around us — we need to learn to be easier on ourselves, more forgiving, more kind, more just, and more loving.  After all, we wouldn’t punish someone else so severely for that minor slip in judgement — so why should we hold ourselves to such an unreasonable standard?

Forgive.  Forget.  Move on.

It’s difficult, but we can do it.  And we’ll be so much healthier for it.



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

Angel on my Shoulder

By Lisabet Sarai

“What a lazy slacker you are, Lisabet! You haven't written a word on Quarantine for nearly a month!”

“No wonder your books don't sell. You barely put any effort into promotion.”

“You just walked right by that beggar. You've got so much more than he does – couldn't you spare a dollar?”

“You said you were going to cut back on drinking, but that didn't stop you from ordering two whiskies last night, did it?”

“You dreamed about him again. Aren't you ashamed? Here you're lying next to your devoted husband, and fantasizing about someone else.”

Remember those cartoons, where the character has a devil on one shoulder, urging him to act on his desires, and an angel on the other, exhorting him to be strong, moral and virtuous? Well, I've got one of those – an angel, I mean – and I have to say she's a bitch. I don't know what happened to her demonic counterpart. Maybe he figured I didn't need any help giving in into temptation. Perhaps the angel actually managed to drive him away. Hallelujah! Good triumphs over evil. Why don't I feel like celebrating?

From what I can tell, she doesn't plan on going anywhere soon. She seems to get her jollies making me feel as guilty as possible. Now I know I don't live up to her ideals – or even my own – but honestly, I do try. And what she doesn't seem to realize is that the guilt she stirs up actually hinders me from accomplishing more, following through on my resolutions, acting more thoughtfully and compassionately.

The more I obsess about my writing (or lack thereof), the more difficult it is for me to sit down and let the story flow. The task of getting my name out there begins to seem so insurmountable that I'm tempted to just give up. I look at all the misery in the world, the hunger, disasters, injustice, and feel as though my own modest resources can't possibly begin to make a dent.Why bother to even try?

It used to be much worse, though. When I was younger, guilt could literally paralyze me. I'd wake up in a panic, palpitations and all, about everything that I had to do and hadn't done. I'd sit there with a mind as blank as my screen (or paper, in the earlier days), unable to write a word. Now I have a strategy that helps quite a bit.

I forgive myself.

Seems like such a simple idea, doesn't it? I listen patiently to the litany of my shortcomings that my angel offers. I acknowledge that perhaps I could have done better. I remind myself (and her) that I am only human. I take responsibility for my failings, but I also note the many successes that my angel somehow never bothers to mention.

Self-forgiveness takes effort. It should be enough to just let go, to release the notion that I've fallen short and accept myself as I am. For some reason, though, I tend to cling to the guilt. Maybe it's a way of punishing myself. I should feel terrible, if I haven't measured up to the world's standards, or my own, right? If I'm serious about self-forgiveness, I have to deliberately put my sins out of my mind and remind myself of the truth. I am basically a good person. My intentions are for the most part pure. I'm doing the best that I can.

What helps most is to realize that all I really have is now. Of course, I want to learn from my mistakes, but they're already in the past. Dwelling on them will not change anything. I don't know what the future will bring, either. All I can do decide how I will think and act now, at this moment. That's where I focus my attention. I can choose industry over sloth, generosity over miserliness, compassion over selfish disinterest. Peace over pain.

It's easy to know when I've been successful in forgiving myself. Relief and comfort pour into my soul. I'm energized and hopeful, ready to apply myself to my goals once more. I'm not the religious sort, but indeed, I feel blessed. And, for a while, at least, my angel falls silent.

Perhaps she doesn't come from heaven at all.