Why I Will Always Choose To Forgive

By Christina Donati

I don’t have the cleanest background. I have been involved in drama, I have lost friends, and I have been in fights that were started due to over-exaggerated, miscommunicated instances.

Because of these things, I have cut people out of my life so quickly, literally without even a second thought.

Over the years I have noticed a change in myself, something I really don’t like. I have become angry, emotional, and I have lost my ability to trust others.

Someone could do the nicest thing for me and I will automatically think that there is an ulterior motive, that they are scheming behind my back.

I allowed myself to become too easily influenced by others’ thoughts and opinions, and I would automatically take those opinions on myself without even looking into the situation. I am sick of this.

After so much time of acting this way, I lost who I truly am as a person. I used to be kind, forgiving, and trusting. I cherished every friendship to its fullest and I would be absolutely devastated if one of my friends was upset with me.

This would lead to me providing endless apologies to try and mend the situation because I cherished these people so much.

However, I lost this ability within the past three years. I developed an attitude where I didn’t care whether or not people walked out of my life, if someone did something even remotely wrong toward me, I would cut them out.

But this hasn’t done me any good, and it has only left me with trust issues and feeling quite alone. This is when I realized I needed to change.

I started to realize every positive trait about me had been ripped away and only the most negative, horrible characteristics of mine surfaced and took over my essence.

So what did I do? I shut all of my negative characteristics off.

I can’t blame my actions on other people, but I can certainly allow myself to stop being influenced by other people, and this was step one. I stopped listening to what other people told me.

The most significant part of me that I miss was my ability to make my own choices about other people and situations. To start getting this part of me back, I have stopped listening to others and trusted my own gut.

Another part of me that I missed was my ability to forgive.

Throughout my whole life, I was taught through my faith to forgive others and to not judge. However, I allowed my judgments to consume me and I gave up forgiving others.

Instead, I would act like someone never existed in my life, something so unhealthy and unnatural. I started to understand that no one is perfect, especially not me, so I wanted to get my ability to forgive others back.

I have used this time of self-reflection to reach out to past people and send apologies, and I promise this has been such an incredible feeling. I can’t say that everything in my life will automatically go back to the way it used to be, but at least I can focus on making sure my future path is paved with my own stone, not someone else’s.

Finally, I just wanted my smile back. My life became so consumed with negativity and anger that I couldn’t find any reason to appreciate and be happy anymore. I am working hard to bring this back.

I started to just expect everything instead of understanding that I need to appreciate all that people do for me. This includes my friends, my parents, and anyone else who does anything for me.

I want people to know I am thankful for all that they do and how they impact my life. These may seem like such small things or like something most people already do, but I lost this part of me.

Why I Will Always Choose To Forgive

I allowed my judgments to consume me and I gave up forgiving others.

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