The Complexities of Forgiveness

*I actually started this post months ago and never finished, but a conversation last night about being "Friend Dumped" made me want to get it out there.

Seven years ago, I had my heart broken so badly it still hurts to think about it today. I've thrown away all old photographs and trinkets and can't even think about the good times without having them tinged with an anxious pain. I can't even be angry, just terribly, terribly sad. Nothing hurts worse than breaking up with a friend, and this was a particularly ugly breakup.

We were joined at the hip my last two years of college. We felt sorry for each other, which, retrospectively, is a recipe for disaster. I should have known what would happen. In fact, if my college experience can be described as anything, it's a toxic waste dump of spectacularly bad relationship choices and a deep underestimation of myself. She carried with her a string of "betrayals" by best friends that she viciously hacked from her life--and I really, truly believed she'd been wronged for being too kind. I knew she had been heavily medicated in the past for emotional problems, but really, truly believed that she'd "prayed herself better." I was 21. I was sad. I was dumb. It happens.

I feel even sorrier for her now. She was unable to blame men for anything, especially the horrible things they'd done to her. So she rained her fallout down on those who tried to help her and braved the explosions of her rage and insanity. And she always managed to find someone who would. It's like she sought out the caring-but-hesistant, a little naive, deeply devoted girl she used to be, then destroyed her over and over just like she was destroyed.

When I got her horrible, brutal email outlining all my sins and faults (many of which were blatantly untrue or intentionally misunderstood, leading me to question her rather tenuous hold on reality), I felt ripped open, exposed, vulnerable, humiliated...and utterly at fault for it. While not comparable in horror, the emotions afterward were unsettlingly rape-like. I wanted to tell everyone so they could tell me I was still good, but I was also so very ashamed and guilty that I wanted to hide it away forever and maybe just forget it ever happened. But mostly what I wanted was for her to like me. I begged forgiveness to no avail. I read back to her the script she'd written with those awful, unforgivable men who'd hurt her.

I'm not saying I was blameless. I'm sure I'd said stupid things or was a bit of a pain from time to time. What I didn't get at the time was that friendship is not reliant on perfection and nobody has the right to brutalize you if you never meant to hurt anyone. This was like beating a child with a belt for knocking over her milk. She contacted everyone we both knew and threatened them if they spoke to me. She had a friend of hers call and terrorize me in the middle of the night months later. And all this time, she herself hid behind an impenetrable wall of silence. I can just now say to myself that even if I did something wrong, I didn't deserve that.

It's taken every second of the time since then to move past those feelings. Before, my friends had been the cornerstone of my life--my one and only constant. Suddenly, I felt like I had nothing, when someone you love so very, very much could just disappear in a flash of anger one night, completely out of the blue--and so soon after the friend I'd had the longest disappeared herself in a flash of headlights plowing into her one night, completely out of the blue. But the people I'd know all along, my true best friends kept me grounded. And then I made some new friends, who patiently ignored my paranoia until I could slowly trust them. And then someone decided to legally obligate himself to being with me. I'm better now and I can make friends like a normal person, for the most part. It comes back, now and then, but fainter and fainter every time. Soon, maybe, I will be able to tell stories about the fun we had with an eye roll and a quick wish for her healing.

I've forgiven her, that much is true. But what startled me is that I'm no longer afraid of her. She showed up on Facebook not long ago as a suggested "Someone You Might Know." I looked at her picture, one'd she'd taken when we were still in college. The same bright black eyes, the same mischevious smile. I felt an instant of panic, and then an intense rush of pity. I stared at her for a moment, then clicked X. No, I don't know her. I never really did. At least now I know me.