More Healing Required
It was a year ago this past Saturday, June 22, 2023, when I was first diagnosed with cancer, and I didn’t need any social media posts of the past as a reminder. That date lives etched within my soul like my birthdate, nine days prior, however there was no celebration to its arrival.
The radiation therapy removed the cancer or reduced it enough depending on how you perceive the explanation of lowered PSA numbers, but mentally last year’s whole ordeal is like dates spinning in a washing machine rise cycle in my mind.
Buried thoughts, the dirty laundry that stink up the clean ones just tossed in, kept running through my mind. Thoughts of a lost year. Thoughts of what’s looming ahead. Thoughts of past and future relationships along with why people only think of themselves.
One such thought that has hurt worse since that diagnosis I haven’t addressed publicly until now is, ‘How can someone know you for years, that knows you care for them as they once claimed for you, and you’ve even donated to a ‘cancer fundraiser’ they helped promote, not once offer any words of support when they know you have cancer?’ Agnieszka knew of my thoughts, early on, of course as I tell her everything in hopes of finally healing from that lost friendship.
I weighed in on the knowledge of ‘expectations’ from my previous sessions with the therapist and although I know I shouldn’t have ‘expected’ any, Agnes tells me it would be ‘a reasonable one.’ for me to expect and ‘a fair one’ if I had, while then injecting ‘but still’ a non-expected one.
Now I find myself in a quandary of what must I do to ‘move on’ from these nightmarish thoughts that I simply can’t shake from someone so obviously lacking any ‘human decency’.
It was time for ‘forgiveness.’
Forgiving Someone Who Hurt You…
I had forgiven her, or so I had thought out of the love I still hold, for ghosting me in February 2023. But I wasn’t sure if I were correct in doing so. Thus, I began here with Agnes.
“Resentment is what keeps you stuck in the past. It’s what you feel when you’ve been treated unfairly or when you’ve been hurt,” the therapist began.
“Resentment and distrust walk hand in hand – if you can’t let go of resentment, it’ll be much harder to trust someone again,” she tells me too, over another issues she knows I’ve been dealing with, ‘trust.’ Definitely a subject for another day.
“Forgiveness is about letting go of resentment; resentment is refusing to forgive,” Agnes adds. “People refuse to let go of resentment because it helps their conviction to not tolerate being treated that way ever again. It serves as a reminder to set their boundaries and put their needs first. That’s why forgiveness sometimes feels like betraying yourself – like being okay with being mistreated. However, that is not what forgiveness is about – it’s about letting go of the pain and moving into the future without carrying the baggage of the past.”
“That’s why healing is essential when it comes to forgiveness, and when you heal your wounds,” in ‘you’ and ‘your,’ I hear her speaking directly at me and not in general as she attaches, “forgiveness happens naturally. So, we shouldn’t aim to forgive, we should aim to heal.”
I sense my ‘forgiveness’ for her was wrong, I see that now. I had forgiven out of love not knowing I needed to ‘heal’ first which I haven’t. I’m not even close knowing that she’s ‘watching me suffer’ through this grief without as much of a word in support. Human decency dictates, not expectations to me and she hasn’t shown any throughout the whole ordeal.
Self-Forgiveness…
“Letting go of resentment towards the self is all about accepting that you’re flawed and that it’s okay to make mistakes,” Agnes begins. “You made what you believed was the best choice at the time, or maybe you did something because you hoped for a better outcome. It’s better to see these mistakes as lessons, instead of using them as sticks to beat yourself with. It doesn’t accomplish anything, except make your life harder.”
Here I’m still pondering at the word ‘resentment.’ I can feel it in Agnes’ meaning but wordology makes it difficult as I don’t want to believe that ‘feeling of love’ I have is a mistake. Because if it is love, it is exuberating and something I had never felt before in any other relationship I’ve ever encountered. It can be best described as a ‘never-ending feeling of the butterflies,’ that still persists. Perhaps an addiction which too is controllable.
Story Time for Grownups
“A man went on a date with a woman he found physically attractive, despite noticing that she was acting oddly and displaying several red flags. Ignoring his instincts, he invited her to his apartment. Unfortunately, she stole a significant amount of money he had hidden in his drawer and vanished without a trace.
For a long time, he was consumed by hatred and resentment towards her. It seemed impossible to let go of the bitterness he felt. But as time passed and he engaged in soul-searching, he began to understand that his resentment wasn’t solely directed at her. He realized that much of his anger stemmed from his own feelings of guilt and self-blame. How could he have been so naive, so careless? Why had he let her in just because of his physical attraction to her? These questions plagued him and turned his anger inward, intensifying his resentment.
With this realization, he began to forgive himself. He accepted that he had made a mistake and recognized that blaming himself as a victim was unproductive. By acknowledging his own imperfections and understanding that people are flawed, he allowed himself to learn from the experience without letting it define him.
As he forgave himself, his resentment towards the woman dissipated. He no longer saw her as the sole source of his pain. Instead, he gave the incident a place in his past, allowing himself to move forward without carrying the burden of anger. In letting go of his self-blame, he also let go of his resentment towards her, finding peace within himself.” – Agnieszka Rdesinska –
Agnes’ stories are always clear and precise. She never uses mine as an example but leaves ample room for an interchangeable narrative.
I wanted to know the differences in forgiveness, such as forgiving oneself vs someone and the ability to do both so I could show some sort of the humanity and save her some face in the process as I’ve played this song time and time again in my mind.
I begin by changing the story’s narrative to fit our own. And although I see similarities, I just can’t fathom how loving someone can be my fault. Yet a share of it I see because of ‘red flags’ I had noticed earlier in the summer and fall of 2022 that I just let slip away.
For sixteen plus months I’ve held that ‘bitterness’ of being left behind with no closure. And now with what has become a persistent migraine I have Agnes telling me, “You’re strong, you’ll get through this turmoil. And you’re not a quitter, you’ll get closure, even if you have to create it yourself.”
I’ve realized that you can’t meet everyone in ‘The Middle.’ especially someone that finds leaving someone else in pain is acceptable.
I must learn to forgive myself.
Agnieszka is a Certified RTT Hypnotherapist and NLP Coach with a Master’s Degree in Medical Sciences
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