I forgive you

Lees in het Nederlands

To anyone who has bullied me in my youth, who didn’t let me participate or has been cruel to me in any other way. 

I forgive you.

Not because it wasn’t bad what you did. It hurt me not only then, but all those years later too. No, I forgive you because I no longer want to be connected to you. You’ve already had too much power over my life. Who knows, you might have had a hard time at home or at school. Maybe it was your way of keeping yourself on top of it and you would have otherwise ended up just like me, at the bottom of the ladder.

I forgive you because you may have learned from your mistakes. Who knows, you may now have a child of your own and see how he or she has a hard time at school. I also forgive you if you didn’t even know what you were doing. How bad it hurt. Time after time. All those evenings that I spent hours thinking about what I would say or do back to you, and in the end never did.

I can’t even tell you what you did. That all seems to be permanently erased from my memory. The only thing I do remember are my feelings of being excluded, which even occur to this day. I forgive you for my fear of groups. I forgive you for the negative self-image I built up through your behavior. I forgive you for the discomfort I still feel when I am in the village where I grew up. I forgive you for all the moments that I have felt alone.

I no longer need that pain, because it gives you far too much power. So that’s why I forgive you. From the bottom of my heart I wish you a very beautiful life. Separate from me.

You may wonder why I am writing this here now. I am going to do my best to explain this as well as possible. In my daily life I am doing great. I have never felt as good in my skin as I am now. But sometimes there are still times when my past has an effect on daily affairs. Slowly I started to realize that I have to process my past to be able to continue really well in life.

But I couldn’t quite think how to handle this. Of course I could seek help from a psychologist or look for a therapy, but that has a major financial impact. When I recently saw this Ted Talk, I felt a eureka moment. I decided that I would forgive everyone who has bullied me in my past. This is my way to post the letter. Will they read it? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I have already read the letter to myself many times and that gives me a good feeling.