Case Study: There is only Self-Forgiveness

So (possibly several) someone(s) who don’t belong anywhere in my life outside of an extremely limited sphere invaded my Facebook. I’ve been stalked before, and it felt scary and unsafe then. It feels scary and unsafe now, too.

Yes, going to a public place JUST to look at (and tattle upon) someone, and for no other reason (there’s no reason to be on MY Facebook page except, obviously, to snoop into MY life–or you’d be in some OTHER public place), is, by very definition, STALKING. Yes, you are a stalker. (Yes, I mean YOU, Mr. XYZ, and YOU, the supposed person who linked my FB page to him). Yes, it’s creepy, it’s threatening, and it’s not sane. You are not sane if you know my ex and you are here at my Facebook page. You are even less sane because you are running to tattle to him because you THINK you know anything at all about my life.

And that’s pretending that I believe his claims that “someone linked it” to him. But it’s okay, because this is an umbrella statement. My ex himself DEFINITELY doesn’t belong on my Facebook page.

But, everything happens for a reason. I teach about self-forgiveness, and that everything you can’t forgive, is about YOU. I detest snoopy stalkers. Yet in this case, what is it about this specific incident that I need to forgive myself for? Isn’t that the question of the hour?

As creepy and inappropriate as stalking me like this is, it has given me opportunity to look at how I don’t forgive ME in all of this.

So here you go. I did know that he’s like this. I couldn’t leave the room to go to the bathroom without, “Where are you going? What are you doing?” I couldn’t fart without him wanting to know why (because I had a build-up of gas in my rectum. happy now?).

I THOUGHT before I posted my comment, “What if he sees this? He’ll think it’s about him.” Then I made the same damned mistake I made since the day I met him… I gave the benefit of the doubt. Even knowing perfectly well that he’s literally obsessively snoopy… It’s like a turtle having a shell… I seem to be stupidly shocked every time I see it… WHOA, that turtle has a shell! Mr. XYZ is snoopy! Shocker! Mr. XYZ went so far as to tell me, on the record, in front of the police, that he doesn’t care how I feel. Yet it still surprises me that he would go on my FB knowing it would make me feel violated and invaded…

That’s not his fault. I want it to be his fault, because it’s human nature to do so. It’s my fault for being surprised by something, by going against my instinct that said, “You know he’s snoopy, you should expect him to be here”. That’s what I see as me having “done wrong”. And it’s a habitual pattern for me, the same way his snoopiness is for him. I keep giving the benefit of the doubt to someone who I know perfectly well doesn’t deserve it from me.

So, this is a lesson from my own life (embarrassing as it is) about how our unforgiveness of someone else is always really about US. This isn’t about him. He’s just being him. He is who he is. I posted something about someone else that I thought he would take personally… dismissing my intuition, dismissing what I know for a fact about him… dismissing my inner guidance because I was angry at some jackass that called me a b****. A so-called professional (gov. worker, no less).

Everything happens for a reason. I know I’ll stop feeling invaded at some point, but for now, I’m going to work on forgiving myself. This has brought up the many, many times when I assumed the best of him, to my own detriment. I still have a lot of forgiving myself to do. I thought he would never cheat (I was wrong). I thought he would never lie to steal taxes from me (I was wrong). I thought the best of someone, despite all evidence to the contrary. I even once saw that he had called another woman right after he and I had sex (his now fiance, which I didn’t know until I learned her name later). I still gave him the benefit of the doubt. And I didn’t do it once (shame on you), I did it over, and over, and over. And I’m still doing it, clearly.

For this, I must forgive myself. When that happens, I won’t have to forgive him, because that will come naturally and easily. Most of the time, I don’t hold this against myself. I had quit beating myself up over it… but then I did it again. Then I project (like most of us do). Now that I know what I know, I’m able to look at this event and find MY “fault” in it (what I blame myself for and feel guilty about, which giving benefit of the doubt to someone who doesn’t deserve it). I’m able to see how I blame myself for “not knowing better” (and in this case, I really DID know better). I’m able to forgive myself for trusting someone I KNOW I cannot, only because I now understand that “the only forgiveness is self-forgiveness”. This is another case in which I also feel like I shouldn’t feel guilty… then I feel guilty for feeling guilty for something I shouldn’t (sound familiar?).

And this time, I’m not making the same mistake. He won’t understand this post, not remotely. He’ll think it’s about him, rather than the fact that it’s about me, and it’s about the people I’m helping understand about how there’s no one to forgive but YOU. This time, though, I won’t be surprised when he thinks it’s all about him. 😉

 

This is a case study from my own experience. The purpose is so that you understand that I do the same darned things you do. We all do! I’m not preaching something to you that I don’t face, myself. I’m not asking you to forgive yourself while being unwilling to do it. I’m giving you this case study so that you realize that ALL unforgiveness of the other–even when it seems like they are “at fault” to you and others… still comes round to YOU. Even when you can justify to yourself and others your unforgiveness of someone else… if you want to live a HAPPY LIFE, you must look at how it comes, always, full circle in the end. It’s me I need to forgive here. Logically, I know I did nothing wrong. I posted on my FB page (that he has no business being on, nor does anyone who knows him) about someone else entirely. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I still feel guilty because I know how he is and “should have known better”. I should have assumed the turtle had a shell… so now I forgive myself for ignoring the turtle shell.

 

It always comes back to you. If you can’t forgive someone else, it means you need to find where/ how you don’t forgive you. Then your feelings of anger, denial, unsafeness, violation (or whatever they are) will dry up–and not until then.

 

If you like these feelings, hold onto your “right” to be angry at the other person. If you don’t like those feelings… look for the ways you aren’t forgiving yourself in the situation, and heal THAT. Then you won’t have to live in these ugly feelings anymore.