Forgiveness

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Mark Twain

This is one of my favorite quotes. The reason why, because I know from personal experience how true it is. I have hated very few people in my life. There are many people whom I dislike or have little to no respect for, but only a select group of people have ever angered me enough to be truly hated by me. One such individual randomly and rather unexpectedly added me as a friend on a social networking site about a year ago. I had harbored these feeling of hatred toward this person for years, and I really believed that I would never be able to move past my feelings of being wronged and forgive them. I accepted the friend request on a whim. Then one thing led to another, and they apologized to me for what had happened in the past. To my own surprise, I suddenly felt like I was ready to forgive them. I was able to say a lot of things that I had thought all those years, but had never been able to say to them. It was such a relief to finally be able to confront this person with the hurt that they had inflicted upon me. After that, we had some conversations. Some were about deep, emotional topics. Others were just insignificant chit-chat. With each conversation we had, I felt more and more of the anger that had been eating me up inside for so long start to dissipate. I actually think that at one point, I was even delusional to think that we might actually be friends one day. Eventually, they ended up deleting me from their friends list. Someone even told me that they had never meant to add me in the first place. That it had happened by accident. Whether or not they added me on purpose or by accident is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned because I believe that it was meant to happen so that I would be able to forgive them and move past my anger. I am so grateful for having the chance to do that.