I read somewhere that you let go of the same person many, many times. At different times, for different reasons. This time I’ve let go of my anger towards J.

I was not bitter because he fell out of love. I was bitter and angry because if he already lost any affection for me, then he should have broken it earlier instead of treating me badly until I got depressed and folded. But no, he used me until he was financially stable so he can finally take off. In the first place, I wasn’t the one who asked him to move in with us. Then he dumped me when he was settled in his own place. That took a huge toll on me mentally. All this time he pretended he loved me because what he was just waiting for was stability for himself. But deep inside he disdains me so much that he didn’t have the decency to break up with me in person. I even had to ask to be told in person. He even didn’t want to give me a last embrace. When I begged for it, he didn’t even hug back…

I knew something was off by the latter half of 2020 but I got gaslighted all the time. I second-guessed myself. But because gaslighting is mental manipulation, the victim loses the ability to trust herself and her judgment. It really confused me. I was a hot mess: here I was trying to keep six people alive by my lonesome during a pandemic, balancing pressures from work and trying to keep my job amid mass layoffs, then he was doing this to me. I had to take my antidepressant to keep me from breaking down.

After he dumped me, I was vacillating between love and anger while trying to pick up the pieces of me, or of what was left of me. I was so angry to the point I regretted so many things, which was contrary to my principle in life of not regretting anything I’ve done. Because I wouldn’t have done things differently. Because I would still have loved him with much intensity and I would have still given my all.

Then one day, just purely by chance, I watched a video of a pastor from Sudan who used to be a hardcore Muslim and hated Christians, and he was willing to kill in the name of religion. Long story short, he said the person whom he tried to kill as a boy had lived and they met again in a Christian convention. The boy who he had thought he had killed had always prayed for him and said he has forgiven him a long time ago.

Something in me struck a chord. Forgiveness.

Because I couldn’t forgive, I couldn’t move on. I couldn’t forgive myself as well. I was harboring this anger as a defense mechanism, as a motivator, as a “f*ck you, J!” statement to him. I was nursing this anger to make me feel better. Which it did not.

After that video, I cried and cried and prayed. And I declared in my prayer:

“J, I forgive you. I am finally releasing you from this anger. I understand now that you did what you did because you didn’t have a choice at that time. You were in a strange country with no options except for going back to your original home country, which was the last thing you will do given that you don’t want to come home to your dad a failure. I release myself from this anger and I am forgiving myself for loving so much that I didn’t even leave anything for myself. I forgive myself for putting you first ahead of my children. I am releasing both of us. I pray that you will be able to find what you seek and may God always guide you and protect you, even if you don’t believe in Him. Amen.

There’s a strange lightness in me after that. I cannot say that I’ve completely healed. It comes slowly and there are moments that strong emotions towards him or over the past still engulf me from time to time. It’s natural to feel sad. It’s ok to miss him sometimes. It’s all right to vacillate between being ok and feeling shitty-I-wanna-cry-it-hurts. It has only been five months.

I held on to that Collective Soul song “Forgiveness” because it holds so much truth in it. And it’s a process. It doesn’t come easy.

It used to be all I want to learn

Was wisdom, trust, and truth

But now all I really want to learn

Is forgiveness for you