The Unforgiven

I've been thinking about forgiveness a lot, for a long time, specifically because I don't think I will ever forgive Steve for what he did over those years. The internet is full to bursting with all these quotes about how wonderful it is to forgive - and just this ONE about the other side of the coin. I have thought and thought, and I have come to the conclusion that actually, sometimes forgiveness is NOT the right thing, and that is not because I'm not a forgiving person, but because I am a VERY forgiving person.

There has been lots of discussion on various forums I'm on about how to forgive your abuser, and I have found myself saying I don't plan to and doubt that I ever will, and that I am glad of that. In response, there have been lots of people saying that I should forgive him for myself, not for him, because otherwise the bad feelings will destroy me. To which I respond:

No, bad feelings won't destroy me, because I have no feelings towards him, as he isn't in my life any more. If he WERE to enter my life again, forgiving him would leave me open to abuse again, because that is exactly what happened in the past - time and again I forgave him, and time and again he abused me again. Now, without forgiveness, any contact with him leaves me frightened and wanting to run - and that is how I am MEANT to feel. This man is evil and he means me harm.

You see, that is what is the problem, it is the very essence of him that makes me not forgive him. When I said I was a very forgiving person, I wasn't just going on my own judgment. Son has before now said, 'Mum, sometimes I think you are TOO forgiving.' There was a recent drama because when I tried to clear the air with an ex-friend who had been spreading rumours about me, she graciously refused to admit that she had done anything wrong in either spreading the rumours or in ignoring me when I approached her to try to sort it out - and then lied about the whole incident afterwards, saying I had physically attacked her! In fairness, I would have if someone else hadn't intervened, but that was only because she was poking my chest like she was some badarse, and comprehensive girls don't let High School girls do that sort of thing with impugnity (she's bigly snobbish about schooling). I tell this story to show how I'm no slacker on the forgiveness front - the rumours were potentially very damaging -  that I was a drug addict, which is, when I last checked, incompatible with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy's Code of Conduct, even if social services didn't get to hear about it (there is already a file on me and my son because of the domestic violence); the fact that I could easily disprove them wouldn't have stopped the inconvenience and stress of an investigation from either quarter. Yet despite this, I was the one who wanted to make things right.

The thing is, I find it easy to forgive, usually. Then when I do, it is complete forgiveness - I don't have a little list in the back of my mind of what people have done. The worst I do is remember what happened and beware of getting myself into that situation again with that person, but as far as the relationship goes, from my point of view the slate is clean and I feel about the person and treat them exactly as I did before. To me, once you have forgiven a person, it's like you have restored the previous version of Windows - everything goes back to how it was before.

Reason being, I can easily see why people do the things they do, I can understand how we all have faults and hang-ups and that usually people do not act out of malice. In a selfish way, I would hope that people would forgive me and understand why I would screw up, so I do that with others. Also, usually people are in my life because I value them, so to not fully forgive would be like having a crack in a beloved vase and constantly looking at the crack rather than the vase.

For many years I struggled to forgive my mother - we had a difficult relationship for reasons which I'll probably go into in a post one day. Then one day I realised that she was a product of her upbringing, and her dad and gran were products of their upbringing, and back and back ad infinitum. It wasn't her fault she was the way she was. She would never be the mother I needed, but she was trying to be her best. But for various accidents of fate, I'd be the same as her, so who was I to judge? I'm not actually sure this rationalisation is the truth, but I've found it is the only way I can live with her in my life, and now she has dementia, it really doesn't matter what the truth is, she can't change anything now. So that is one situation where I have forgiven for my own sake - and for hers, incidentally, as if she didn't have me she'd be stuck!

Steve himself would say he didn't know why I was friends with certain people because of things they had done to me. In his typical disordered way, he has never forgiven anyone in his life. He doesn't have to - to him, people are either wholly good or wholly bad, and it all depends on whether he approves of their last action related to him. It wouldn't matter that I had paid to take us on holiday, and had spent the whole week doing everything I could to make him happy. If I then spoke to someone while he was outside smoking, that made me a bad person who deserved to be beaten. It wouldn't matter that his sister gave him somewhere to live for six months; if she then refused to lend him £5 she was an evil cow, always had been, and he HAD to move out. Conversely, if she had been refusing to let him see her and her son for a year due to his addiction, if she then gave him her old iPod she immediately transformed  into the salt of the earth, a really good girl.

This is part of the reason I can't forgive him. He isn't like other people. He hurts others not because he messes up, but because inside is a soul-less excuse for a personality. I've seen him transform into the devil himself, seen a reptilian persona slide over the mask of his human features. If I believed in demon possession, I'd believe I've seen it. Everthing he does is all about him, he has no genuine feelings for others. Not forgiving him is an act of self-protection and preservation.

Yet here are the definitions of forgiveness from Wikipaedia (I've looked at lots of other sites too, and they are very similar):
"renunciation or cessation of resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offence, disagreement or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution."
"to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of offence or debt"

By those definitions, I have forgiven him. If I passed him in the street and he was on fire, I would piss on him. Well, I wouldn't, but I'd put him out. I have no thoughts of revenge any more. I bear him no malice in my heart. He has no place in my heart at all any more.

But wipe the slate clean? Oh no, never, not if I live to be a million years old, not even though it would most likely be a paper exercise as I doubt I will ever see him again.

Some people don't deserve my type of forgiveness. Which is a shame, because the only qualification is to be a person, not sub-human.

Outdoing Outnumbered

This is a tale of my Christmas Day. It is often said that my life should be a soap opera, and it is equally often said that if it were, everyone would think it was too far-fetched. Christmas Day was one of those times.

I was doing dinner for my older sister Sue, my nieces Kim and Nicky, Nicky's boyfriend Paul, my son, and my mother. Oh, and their two dogs, Perry (medium sized dog, does agility, well-behaved) and Mini (tiny dog, does what she likes, very badly behaved). My sister and the rest were picking Mum up on their way here, and she was getting a taxi home, because we all knew that once dinner was over, she would want to go home, saying she felt ill. She always does this.

Well, they all rocked up about 11.30 - but Kim was feeling severely ill after being up til 5am drinking, refusing to go to bed, and apparently yelling, 'I'm gonna ruin Christmas!' Little did she know....

So the usual shenanigans of opening presents set off. My younger sister Mandy had sent Mum over a cushion that cost nigh on £50, because it was personalised with photos of Dad. We were all expecting her to love it, but when she opened it she said, 'what the hell is that?', like it was shit on a stick or something. Nicky managed to talk her around into liking it, but I am almost certain that she didn't recognise Dad at first. Which means she's getting even worse.

There were also the usual dog shenanigans. Mini got through Oscar's cat flap and out into the garden - and then through the hole in the hedge and into next door's garden before Nicky could stop her. The neighbour tempted her near to him with a dog biscuit, but she was growling and barking at him and wouldn't let him pick her up, so Nicky went around and got her. We blocked the cat flap with the bin, and thought no more of it.

Eventually dinner was served. Kim was saying how hungry she was, and she and Sue had been trying to eat the chestnuts before they were in with the sprouts even, so everyone had an appetite. There was a bit of a palaver where Sue wanted Mum sat at the head of the table, which involved her climbing into position half way behind the end of a bookcase, but soon we were all sat down, dinner on plates, gravy being passed around. When suddenly Sue asked, 'Are you ok Mum?'

'No, I feel a bit sick,' said Mum.

Feel a bit sick my arse, she was boaking right then and there! Luckily I was Olympic speed with the sick bucket, and got it in front of her just as she began to heave. But not before Nicky and Paul, whilst trying to move the table so she could get out, had caused it to partially collapse where the extra leaf had obviously not been secured properly. Champagne and pomegranate bucks fizz all in my dinner - and in the parsnips.

Meanwhile, Sue had moved away from Patient X to the middle of the room, and was yelling, 'get out! get out!' at Mum, as Mum was trying to say, 'I can't!' in between chucks. Kim, whose stomach couldn't have been feeling great anyway, was sat next to mum, looking decidedly queasy, until I got a fit of hysterics at the ludicrousness of it all and then Kim joined in. So there we are, Nicky holding up the table, me and Kim cackling like two Essex witches, Mum throwing up, Sue yelling 'get out, get out!', Paul wondering about the etiquette of continuing to eat when someone is vomiting in a bucket at the dining table - when my Son yelled, 'MINI'S ESCAPED!' For she had managed to move the bin and was off. Cue Nicky not knowing what to do - should she run to get Mini and risk the table collapsing, or should she leave Mini who could easily get out onto the road?

Luckily, through my tears of laughter, I managed to get the table together again, and Nicky managed to retrieve Mini before she left the garden. Mum got out from her seat and Sue ushered her into the bathroom.

'So,' said Paul, 'who had their money on Nanny at 1.30?' And then, 'I've gotta say, I can usually read these things, but my money was on Kimmy at noon.'

No-one really had much of an appetite after that, except for Paul. 'I did stop eating for a moment there, cos when Sue kept on yelling 'get out', I was scared she might turn on me next.' We did our best to eat, although Nicky has a vomit-phobia, and it wasn't made any better by me and Kim keeping on falling about laughing, and reliving it. It didn't help me and her much either, cos we kept on replaying it in our heads.

I went to check on Mum, and she was ok. I took the bucket and cleaned it and put it back. She was sitting in the living room watching the Corrie repeat (it's all new to her anyway) while we finished our meal. At one point there was a lull in the hilarity (we had lost the plot big time by then) and we heard a strange bump from the living room. I ran to see what had happened, but it was nothing, just a present falling off a chair.

'You thought that was Mum, didn't you?' said Sue

'I DID! I thought the only way this could get worse would be if she'd carked it before we even reached the pudding!'

There was a lot of food wasted that day.

'There was a moment,' said Nicky later, 'when I had picked up Mini, but didn't want to come back into the vomit-session, when I could hear next door through their open window. Quiet conversation, and the occasional gentle laughter... and I had a vision of how normal people's lives are.'

Strangely, when I'd watched the Xmas Special of Outnumbered on Christmas Eve, I'd found the storyline (involving vomiting and diarrhoea) a little far-fetched - 'that would never happen' I thought. If only.....