People say forgiveness sets you free, but forgetting can feel like asking the heart to erase its own history. Forgiving may lift the weight of resentment, yet the memories often remain, etched into the mind like faint scars.
There is a level of pain that one will cause that you just can't let go of, even if you forgive and forgetting will always be a problem.
Let me give you a small story. I have a friend who is like a sister to me. While we were in school, in fact, I go everywhere with her. People think that we are cousins because our closeness was out of this world. There is no place she goes that I am not aware of.
She had a boyfriend back then, and her guy was doing well. I was single as a Pringle. I always wished I could get someone that loves me and treats me right like her boyfriend. In fact, her boyfriend is what we singles will shout God when. But, you see, contentment is something that some people lack.
I finally got a boyfriend. Yes, he was very rich. I didn't want to introduce him to anybody yet. It was still on the down-low, but later out of trust, I told my friend about him. She seems to be very happy for me, and he always brings things like provisions, toiletries, and many other items, which I share with her equally.
But something happened and sometimes I just feel like I was very stupid in trusting her. During my birthday, he threw me a surprise birthday party with her. It was funny, I enjoyed every bit of it.But after my birthday, things changed. He doesn't call me as he used to before, and my best friend was always traveling to Port Harcourt to see her boyfriend, who she told me was now staying in Port Harcourt.
Suddenly, my boyfriend said he was traveling to the UK for business. Guess what, you all guessed right - my best friend and my so-called boyfriend were having affairs. Did I find out? No, but karma has a way of exposing what was hidden.
She got pregnant because he always said he wanted a child, thinking he would marry her. No way, that's when I got to find out. To think I was telling her that he had changed, and she was encouraging me to move on. Well, he didn't marry her, and I refused to go back to him ,because the pain of that betrayal was deep in my soul.
It made it hard for me to allow my female friends around my guy alone. We quarrel and she even tried to poison me. I have forgiven her but each time I hear her name, I just have a fresh memory of everything that happened to me.
Can one truly claim to have moved on if the past still whispers in moments of quiet?
Forgiveness is about releasing the grip of pain, while forgetting is about silencing its echo. Some wounds teach lessons too valuable to erase like my friend's betrayal, and some memories serve as reminders of our strength. So maybe the question isn't whether we can forgive and forget, but whether we can remember without letting the memory control us. In the end, forgiveness may be a choice, but forgetting, if it comes at all, is a gift time chooses to give.
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