Postaday for May 7th: Forgive and Forget? Share a story where it was very difficult for you to forgive the perpetrator for wronging you, but you did it — you forgave them.
I can’t remember having ever forgiven someone because, you know that proverb: forgive and forget. Wait, not proverb. Psalm. No, not psalm, maybe… idiom? Cliche. Saying? Folkway. I don’t know what it’s called! But I always do it: forgive and forget.
Remember that movie, Momento? (it would be a delicious irony if you didn’t). I’m like that guy when it comes to forgiveness. I’ve even taken to tattooing the names of people I’ve forgiven on my thigh (this is a total lie but so is the forgetting thing).
I can’t tell you the numbers of times I’ve found myself sitting in a filthy motel room, needle in one hand and a broken Bic pen in the other, cell phone cradled in one shoulder as I talk to some strange person about forgiveness. These memories are in black and white. There’s a post it note stuck to one knee, with a name on it, or names, or sometimes a doodle of a duck. I think I must have had some serious issues with ducks in my life because I’m always finding post it notes around my house and I can’t help but think, when the heck did I draw this?
On my right leg I’ve got my wife’s name three or four times, which make sense: people in love hurt each other all the time. Forgive and forget, it’s how a marriage lasts. Also on that leg: my dad, my mom, by brother, and my wife’s sister and her husband. That last one has something to do with a train in Switzerland. Or maybe Sweden. I don’t really remember.
On my left leg I’ve got Robert Downey Jr, the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, Twizzlers, and the ending of Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl.
Notoriously absent: Oklahoma City, a bouncer at the Taj night club in Vegas, Verizon, 1986, and every single freakin’ person who changes lanes more than once in less than a quarter mile on Highway 5.
In general I’m a pretty easy-going person. I don’t have to forgive very often because I don’t take offense too often. At least I don’t think I do. It’s hard to remember. For example, I don’t remember names very well at all. Maybe the reason I can never remember names is because those people always offend me? Maybe, instead of being embarrassed every time I see someone and realize I can’t recall their name, instead I should be angry?
“Hey good to see you again!”
“Hi…”
“Jason, right?”
“Yes… uh…”
“It’s Dave.”
“Ah, right, Dave. You bastard.”
Memory’s a funny thing. So’s forgiveness. And it occurs to me that a saying I’ve heard, “first you must forgive yourself” does not bode well for me. Or maybe that’s an idiom. Or a Psalm. Darn it, I can’t remember!