Unveiling my past | Hurt people, hurt people: Forgiveness

Hurt people, hurt people.

Ever since I heard that sentence I've been wondering what it meant. I've been wondering so much about it and never knew that it was right in front of me. I was hurt, and I was hurting people too. Does that make sense? I realized that there are areas in our life that we don't even know that it isn't okay anymore, that you're not okay anymore.

I was at that point in my life. I didn't know that I was still hurting from the things that happened in the past. I didn't know that there were wounds unhealed from the horrors of my past.

During the pandemic, those wounds that I have been covering up all my life opened up. All those months isolated. It made me go crazy. I couldn't help but overthink everything.

The pain kept me in the dark for a little while, but it also gave me a reason to be a light for everyone to see and build myself back up again.

Sometimes it's comforting to know that someone else is feeling your pain and it isn't something you're making up on your mind. Sometimes life throws you somewhere you think you can't recover from or can't handle anymore. Sometimes the people you trust gives you a reason not to. Sometimes you think that you have it all figured out until you don't. But like I said before life isn't all “butterflies and rainbows”.

People will eventually hurt us somehow, someway. And we'll eventually hurt them too either intentionally or unintentionally. But you know what? that's life. It's all up to you. If you're gonna spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for yourself or you could either let go and let God.

The crazy thing is we may not realize that we are hurting and that there are things that we haven't let go of yet. When a person is hurt they could either turn out better or bitter. Sometimes it's hard to see the good things when you're blinded by your own pain. It's hard to forgive those who have hurt us. But, forgiveness isn't something you could just give a person. It's grace given by God. It's something we should ask our heavenly Father for.

For me, forgiving the people who have hurt me was hard. For years I've kept the pain and anger inside me, not knowing that it was slowly affecting the people that I love.

Then it hit me. It was the way I thought that made me think I couldn't forgive them. They weren't getting in the way of me setting myself free, I was. You may not realize that you're the one who's getting in the way of you.

Holding a grudge against someone means being bitter for the rest of your life.

I'm not trying to shame anyone who's holding on to their pain. Because I know what you feel. You feel as if that person who hurt you doesn't deserve your forgiveness for whatever they did. But forgiving them isn't acknowledging that what they did was “okay”, but accepting the fact that what happened, happened. Forgiving them will help you move forward, move on, and set yourself free.

Imagine living a life without holding a grudge against anyone.

But fair warning, forgiving isn't something that happens overnight and suddenly all the pain and anger just go's away. It's a long process. Something that may take days, months, or even years, who knows? "What's meant to be will always find a way" -Tresha Yearwood

---