“You need to learn how to forgive.”
Those were some of the last words that my biological mother uttered to me before I exited our relationship.
I had asked her not to bring up my older sibling. Just hearing his name was bad enough but hearing my bio mom disregard the violation and shame I carried for all the years created a strange rage within me. People talk about forgiveness as a powerful, magical decision that either a god inspires or a noble and wise human being achieves with a snap of the fingers. I did not understand what she meant, and further, it felt to me that she was suggesting that I forget everything he did to me. Forget the years of molestation and just “be okay with it.”
As I left her trailer that balmy summer night, I let her hug me goodbye, although I felt sick when she touched me. “Shut the fuck up, be a man!” shouted the inner voice. “Bury it and carry on.”
But I was pushing 40, and it was getting harder and harder to keep that stuff buried.
Was I crazy? Was my mom really a “good mom who did the best she could?” Was what my brother did to me “just normal childhood experimentation?” as he had exclaimed the last time I took his call?
And then I ordered that birth certificate that didn’t exist, and it all slammed home. I had been Forrest Lang my entire life, been to war as Forrest Lang, charged with murder as Forrest Lang. When it sunk in that I had no birth certificate because the foster mom pedophile had adopted me to stop visits from the county, I faced it head-on. Directly.
I began writing it all down. First, with some help, and then I spent two years writing, painstakingly living it all over and over. I called people from all those periods of my life because I wanted to be as accurate as possible. I opened up a few times about some of the heavy stuff in the past, and they didn’t believe me. I wanted to make sure I was telling the truth. Psychological trauma is a strange wound. In my experience, it can cause a person to question their own sanity. I faced that question over and over.
The more I dug in, the more it became apparent; it did happen, and it really was that bad. Not everyone got molested and beaten and isolated, ate from dumpsters, entered foster care, and still got molested and almost killed in a murder/suicide at 16. I am not alone with this kind of experience, but mine was nowhere near a normal, happy childhood. And the after-effects, man, the programming drives the autopilot, and I made decisions and mistakes to match that horror. I accidentally shot and killed my friend in 2001. I attracted toxic relationships. I have struggled with a poverty mentality and a crisis mode for most of my life.
“You need to learn how to forgive.” What the fuck did that even mean? My mentor in 2015 was a Vietnam vet, and he preached the same thing. Forgiveness. Not for a sexual abuser, but for myself for making the mistake that cost my dear friend his life. What did it mean?
I finally hired an excellent editor, and in the tedious in-between of waiting for chapters to appear in my inbox, I began asking people around me about forgiveness. “Forgiveness is for you, not for them. Forgiveness sets you free. Forgiveness is being around them again. Forgiveness means that it is okay now. Forgiveness means to move on.” It all sounded vague and unclear. “Forgiveness is to stop saying bad things about them. Forgiveness is practicing forgiveness. To develop a forgiving heart. Forgiveness is to give mercy, even if they don’t deserve it.” It all sounded like bullshit- unclear and not answering my question. What is forgiveness?
I decided to as my friend google and came across something big for me.
Forgiveness is to clear resentment and abandon revenge.
It was wordier than that, but I like simple. Simple but not easy. A daily choice to face anything in me that reflects anything I hate about them and to make a daily decision to abandon revenge.
Nothing about justice at all. As I was thinking, the end of a 3-week contemplation, I realized that justice and forgiveness are two entirely separate things
Revenge is individual. Justice is systemic. In other words, if I kill the pedophile, that is revenge. If the pedophile gets charged and receives the death penalty, that is justice because punishment is applied by the community, not by an individual. Forgiveness is personal, and justice is systemic.
Forgiveness is clearing of resentment and abandoning revenge. A daily choice to clear up any negativity within myself that I mirror in others and to discontinue personal punishment for past offenses.
As I walked out to the jeep, I smiled; it made perfect sense. I am not a religious person. I do not study any particular religious text. But as I got in my wrangler, I got goosebumps from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I heard a voice from within that said, “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all of the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
I smiled broadly. Life is good.