On Forgiveness

Ah, the F word.

I've noticed that it's one of those words that gets bandied about like a hot potato, especially among groups of victims, survivors, ACoNs, Narcs, users, abusers, the abused, the scorned, the hurt, the hurters.  Basically, in any group of people who've perpetrated a crime against another human being or who've been victimized by other human beings, you can count on the F word coming up at some point on either or both sides of the conversation.

The Bad Uns want your forgiveness.  More on this a little further in.

The Good People who are trying to help you heal want you to give forgiveness, and this just bothers the ever loving hell out of me.

The kinder amongst that last group say things like this:
Forgiveness is the gift you give yourself.
Forgiveness is just the tool you use to move on.

The more self-righteous amongst them might say:
You holding on to your anger is keeping you from healing.
You won't be able to get better until you forgive them (it/him/her.)

And my personal favorite:
By not forgiving, you're letting them (it/him/her) live rent free in your head.

I'm certain that they mean well, really, and it's been my experience that for non-ACoNs, those who haven't had to survive the types of intentionally inflicted horrific abuse that most of us have had to live through, it's just a pop-culture fall back position.  Like something that they heard on Dr. Phil that seemed to make a lot of sense at the time, and it's the only thing that they can think of.  When faced with the fact of only a fraction of the pure evil that my NFOO has hit me with, I'm convinced that most normies go into shock.

I was once in a car wreck in the middle of nowhere - I was by myself and ended up driving off the road, rolling the car I was in twice and landing several yards down a very steep embankment in the middle of the woods.  I wasn't wearing a seat belt, like a freaking idiot, so I got the full effect of the spin cycle.  It was dark and I had a concussion and several scrapes, so I was bloodied up a bit and seriously confused.  After I finally figured out how to get out of the car, I got tangled up in a barbed wire fence while climbing - crawling really - back up toward the road.  I fell - in shorts - on my knees on the asphalt when I finally got back to the road, scraping the hell out of them, too.  After a few more minutes of bumbling around in the dark, screaming to the empty woods and fields around me, I saw headlights coming.  I couldn't think what to do, but I was terrified that they'd drive right past me.  I sat down in the middle of the road, determined that they were going to stop and help me or just run me the fuck over.  (As I re-read this, I can't help but notice that this true story - which happened when I was 16, by the way - is a fairly apt metaphor for what my childhood in the NFOO felt like.)

At any rate, they did stop and helped by getting me back to my friend's house, who then called the NParents after I convinced them not to call 911, and somehow I ended up cleaned up and in serious trouble.  I don't remember the exact course of events after I gave up and planted my ass in the middle of the country road, but I do remember this.
The nice couple who stopped to pick me up saw me bloody and bruised and crying and knocked for a loop in the middle of nowhere took one look at me and said,
"Oh my god, are you okay?"

The friend's parent who answered the door screamed at the sight of me and then said through her fingers covering her mouth,
"Oh my god, are you okay?"

The people who saw me with my bandages and bruises over the next week all looked at me and said,
"Oh my god, are you okay?"

Honestly, did I look very fucking okay?
But I think it's a reflex, a thing we say when we don't know what else to say, like, "I'm sorry for your loss," when we talk to someone who's recently had a person close to them die.  It's a place holder, really, because we don't know what else to say, but we know we should say something.

I'm sorry for your loss?  Is the dead person really lost?  Cause that could be a serious public health hazard if all those bodies are missing.

Are you okay?  What, you mean apart from the blood and the fact that my brain might be swelling right up to the edge of my skull right now?  No, not really.

And all those canned sayings about forgiveness... well, I think they're just the same type of thing.  What those phrases are meant to imply is the idea that we, as the wronged party, will feel better is we can let the wrong, the slight against us, go.  If we can give it up to the great higher power of the universe, we won't have to carry that burden around with us anymore.  Is there truth to this?  Sure, I think so.  Drop the rock, so to speak, ha ha.  But I don't think that letting something go, choosing not to dwell on it, moving on - I don't think that any of those things require forgiveness, at least they don't for me.

So I think that the Good People trying to help are basically misinformed as to what forgiveness is to an ACoN and what is required in order for forgiveness to be given and it is this, for me:

A person has to stop repeating their hurtful actions toward me in order for me to consider forgiveness of them for those actions.
A person has to take responsibility - complete and total responsibility with no excuses - for their actions in order for me to consider forgiveness of those actions or of them.
A person has to show me, through repeated actions that are the exact opposite of their hurtful action that they are walking the talk of their alleged character change in order for me to consider forgiveness of them or their actions.
Essentially, it goes like this: Admittance, Accountability, Repentance, Atonement.
Then we talk can talk about the F word.
*And, honestly, I'd just love to hear from anyone with a Narc in their life who's followed through on all four of those criteria long term, so let's say... oh, five years, without reverting back to the old ways.  In the words of one of my favorite movies (bonus points if you know it,) "I would pay a million pesos to see the look on those guys' faces when they see this baby coming through..."  Seriously, anyone have a Narc follow through on this?  Anyone? Anyone?

Considering forgiveness of an abuser or their abusive actions at any point prior to those actions of change being fully played out, well that's just insanity as the definition of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.  How do I know?  Read on.

I want to tell you a story about forgiveness and action.  My father sexually abused me.  I believed the lies that he was sorry, that my mother who knew about it and manipulated me into recanting my statement to the police was sorry and would protect me from further abuse.  I forgave him, and I forgave her because they asked me to and because I wanted to believe that they were deserving of forgiveness and that I was deserving of giving myself that 'gift of forgiveness.'  Weren't we all just evolved creatures?  Wouldn't the Good People who want to help have been proud?

And guess what?  He didn't sexually abuse me again.  Hooray for the healing power of forgiveness!  Oh, wait, that's right, he just waited until one of my DD's was old enough to hit his pedo-radar and abused her instead!  And guess what?  NM knew about that too and manipulated my DD into not telling me!

Fuck forgiveness.

As to what the Bad Uns want forgiveness for?  Well, that's simple, don't you think?
They just want your permission to hurt you again, and to sweeten the sadistic pot by being able to remind you later on that you can't bring up how they hurt you because didn't you, after all, say that you forgave them?  With no take-backs!

Hurting a person like my NFOO hurt me is a conscientious, planned action - series of actions, really, and we call that a pattern.  Mr. Newton taught us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Forgiveness is an action, too, and I think we sometimes get confused in thinking that it's the only action we can take when we're LC or NC or still trying to get away.  We think it will help us heal.  But I think it's often the wrong action where Narcs are concerned.  I think that the appropriate action to facilitate healing is to push the abusers out and deny them access, to make is so that they can't hurt us anymore.  Then we can heal.  They're just scab-pickers, and they had to go before my wounds could close.

Trust is now earned with me.
Forgiveness is earned with me too.  You want free forgiveness?  Get religion.
I'm not going to feel bad for protecting myself, and I don't need to forgive my oppressors in order to feel free.  Staying No Contact with them is really all I need for that.

So, that's the gift I'm giving myself: safety.
I use the tools of growth (honoring my self, detachment from those who hurt me, honesty, introspection, cognitive therapy) to get over the six different ways from Sunday that they screwed me up,and so far forgiveness hasn't been necessary for that growth (if anything, approaching it has been detrimental to me.)
I let go of my anger by feeling safe enough to let it go, not by absolving those who caused it.
I am better, because they're not able to reach me to hurt me anymore, not because I've forgiven them.

And that rent-free thing?  Hoo boy, Narcs are tape worms.  They crawled in when I was just a baby and set up shop in my head.  They built condos there and lived in style.  I cut as much out as I could by booting them out of my life, not by forgiving them.  Do they still live in my head?  Of course they do, they're my Family Of Origin.  But I've got 'em locked down in SuperMax with all the rest of the creeps and criminals, and I'm quite certain that I won't be commuting their life sentences.

Forgiveness or not, that's where they're staying, and I could give a shit what Dr. Phil or anyone else has to say about it.

Love,
Vanci