Remember to Forget

In reply to Maggie’s question: “Can you forgive but really forget?”

Some days my heart literally aches when I think of certain memories. I feel the emptiness in my chest, my heart being tugged in an enormous hole. Some days I can still feel the sadness even in an environment surrounded by true, genuine love and happiness. Sometimes it takes days for me to forget after the pain is resurfaced from the years having passed. And some days, it’s one, two or three different past and painful situations wrapped up together inside my head: remembering.

As we get older, man, it piles up! Different painful situations from different relationships start to add up. The pain that one suffered gets intensified as relationships develop or as relationships expand. Intensified in the sense that we learn to brace ourselves for emotional pain to come or heightened because after years of trying to forget, we don’t and now we’re just messed up! Perhaps after the forgiving, the forgetting doesn’t happen because it is impossible to have the reminders in our face literally every day in many different ways.

I’m not sure what Maggie was referring to. Perhaps her sister stole her favorite purse. Or perhaps her vet misdiagnosed her dog. It could be anything. But let’s talk about the most common “forgive and forget” scenario. Cheating. Two-timing. Infidelity. And let’s take Tiger Woods for lack of better example. Do we really expect hundreds, or thousand, maybe even millions of women to “forget” their husbands or boyfriends cheated when they are bombarded by the Tiger Woods scandal? His face is on every magazine at the check-out counters of the supermarkets! Everyone on the radio is talking about him and everyone on TV has an opinion, a justification, or a psychological answer to Tiger’s behavior. If something like this has happened to you, how in the world can you forget when it’s all we can talk about? I find it impossible to believe that old wounds are not opened for many, many women…err, people when our society partakes in a global discussion.

No, I don’t think you can forgive and forget. I believe you can forgive but not forget. Whether it was a stolen purse or a bad vet, every time you see a purse or a dog, you most probably think of the situation. So I believe, what needs to be done is a need to take care of you and how to handle that “not-forgetting” little situation we have on our hands. The forgiving is personal for everyone (and I won’t touch on that assuming that Maggie has forgiven, however her journey). The “not-forgetting” can bring out the “uglies”-horrible moods, anger, depression, and earfuls for the girlfriends who were oh-so-over it many years ago. This is not attractive behavior. So we must combat the root of a new problem after the original problem: us. I hear prayer works for a lot of people and a nice cocktail for even more (I kid, I kid)! Counseling and therapy is a great idea and in vogue as it is now widely accepted, if not, encouraged. For me, yoga does the trick. I feel so refreshed, spiritual and calm that those memories get tucked back at my lowest chakra until something like a la Tiger-humongous-jumbo reminder comes to bring it back out.

Jokes aside, if someone asks for forgiveness or didn’t but you decide it’s time to forgive in order to move on; forgetting is our own and another responsibility right? We need to realize and remember that forgetting is a life-long process. My heart will continue to be tugged and ringed by the past, but my mind must be at peace to accept the present.

Xoxo,
Betty