The Impossibility of Forgiveness

-- I wanted to write about a few things. I know someone whose relative is very ill, and has been ill for awhile. Without sounding too harsh, I feel like they've gotten used to having this unfortunate situation as a constant excuse for anything and everything. Having grown up in a family where we didn't talk about our problems, I wonder if this person really is doing an injustice to their family member by constantly using them as a "Get Out of Jail" free card, or if it's just my natural aversion to being so public with personal problems. Secondly, I wanted to write about another kind of temptation that comes with loss. The temptation to revel in the control you get as a grieving person. The speaker of the monologue mentions how when you've suffered a sole loss, you're allowed to grieve in whatever way you want, and nobody can contradict you, but when you lose someone and others are lost as well that don't have a connection to you, suddenly you're not in control and you've still suffered the loss. That's why I think there's so much animosity after mass tragedies, because you're asking people who feel entitled to own the tragedy to have to share something they feel is very private. Okay, that's all for now. Let me know what you think, as always. --

"The Impossibility of Forgiveness"

I can’t forgive him
I can’t forgive him for saying it
And he can’t take it back
So where do we go from here?

No, it’s not okay
It’s not okay to feel this way
I can’t stop hating my husband
That is not okay
It is not normal
To feel
This way

Tell me what I need to do
To make it stop
Or we can just end the session now
And I can go find a divorce attorney
Because this can’t go on
It can’t

. . . . .

Mack would have been
Twenty-one
This week

When you…
It’s really not that big a deal
I mean
Considering
Every week is something

He would have graduated high school
He would have left for college
He would have voted for the first time

All the birthdays
All the Christmases
All the Mother’s Days

Every week is a big week

. . . . .

There were three other kids in the car

Annabelle
Michael
Olivia

Do you want to know
What I find frustrating?

I’ll warn you
It makes me sound like a horrible person

I hate that I have to share
That I have to share my tragedy
With other people

When something happens to you
You have the right
To mourn
In any way you see fit

You can scream
You can curse
You can abuse your loved ones
And it’s all expected

But when you share a tragedy
With other people
Who are not even your family
Who just happen to be the families
Of the children who were in the car
With your child
You’re just casting your vote
As to how you think
Healing should occur

Annabelle’s father
Charles
Is a very religious man
He forgave Paul Harper
Almost instantly

He said he thought
That we all should
That Paul was a lost soul
That his wife had died the year before
As if we all already didn’t know that
As if that excuses him drinking
For four hours straight
And then hopping into his car at 2am
With the ambition of striking a tree
And ending his miserable life
Only to end four wonderful lives instead

Charles said forgive
I don’t want to forgive
I don’t want to talk about forgiving
I don’t want to hear about it
But I have to
Because Charles
Shares my tragedy

And I hate that
I want it to be mine
I want it to be something I own
All me
It’s bad enough that it’s mine
It’s excruciating and unbearable
But the fact
That other people
Get to own it too
Is more than I can stand

One of the benefits of suffering
Is that you’re supposed to look at people
And say—You don’t know how this feels
You don’t know what I’m going through
And I can’t say that

And people look at me
And say—Isn’t it nice?
That you’re not going through this alone
That you have people to share your grief with

And the truth is
I’m not happy about that
I’d rather be alone
I feel alone anyway
I should at least enjoy the perks
Of actually being alone

. . . . .

It seems everyone is forgiving Paul
But they forget
They forget that Paul
Walked around for a year
After his wife died
Using that poor woman
As an excuse for everything he did

My library books are late?
My wife died
I’m overdue on all my bills?
My wife died
I ran a red light?
I’m so sorry, but did you hear about my wife?

It was disgusting
I was disgusted by it
But I never had the nerve to say that
Because everybody thinks
That just because something bad has happened to you
You instantly become some kind of saint

I’ll tell you something
I lost my son
And I’m no saint
And I certainly don’t go bringing up his name
To get out of paying my mechanic

I am grief-stricken
But I am capable
I am competent
I am not going to use Mack
As a scapegoat
For all the fucked up things
I might do or not do
As a result of him dying

That’s on me
That’s all on me
Just like it was on Paul
Just like it was on him
When he got in that car

But still
They forgive him
And I’m the bitch
I’m the bitch who won’t let it go
Who won’t go on some talk show
And wrap my arms
Around the man who killed my son
And absolve him of his guilt
So he won’t have to live with it

I have to live with devastation
Why shouldn’t he have to live with guilt?

. . . . .

Kerry
Michael’s mother
She called me…
She said I was
Bloodthirsty

Because I kept saying Paul should get the chair
Well he should
HE SHOULD!

If they still hung people
I’d be up for that

Everyday that man wakes up
And he can read a book
He can feel the sunlight
He can go get married
He can have children

Mack can’t do that
Mack doesn’t have that option
Is it cliché to put it that way?
Yes
But it’s true!

Charles says I’m not a Christian
That I’m amoral
For not releasing Paul
From his emotional burden
I slapped him across the face
When he said that

I would have slapped Kerry too
But Derek pulled me away

Bloodthirsty
Amoral
Lovely things to say
To a woman who’s lost her…

I almost did it
Ha

I almost said it
It’s tempting I guess
I’ll never say it’s not tempting
But I won’t do it
I won’t use his name
In that way

. . . . .

Derek said it
He said—I forgive him
And now I can’t forgive Derek
Isn’t that something?

Derek says he’s not doing it for Paul
He’s doing it for himself
So he can get rid of the anger
He says he’s sick of being angry

I looked at him and said—

‘I’m sorry
I wasn’t aware there was a choice
I can just stop being angry?
I can just end it?’

And I snapped my fingers.

‘Just like that?’

I’ve gotten so catty lately
So snide and smarmy
I hear words coming out of my mouth
And I want to slap myself across the face

I feel like I’m becoming Mary Tyler Moore
In ‘Ordinary People’
Have you ever seen that?
The therapist in it was great
Much better than you
Sorry to say

. . . . .

He says he’ll leave me
If I can’t do it
If I can’t find it in myself
To forgive that man

Derek says he understands
That you have to do it on your own time
But part of him knows that given the chance
I’ll never do it

And I’m impossible to live with
I’m aware of that
But somehow I can’t do anything about it
And to make matters worse
I can’t forgive him now either

I’m just full of this sticky resentment
It’s like being wrapped in taffy
You reach out
And you’re pulled back
You feel like you could be okay
That you could say something without yelling
Without being hurtful
And the resentment just pulls you back in
It shoots out something worse
Than you’ve ever said
Worse than you’ve ever even thought of saying

And when you see the people you love
Start to leave you
Part of you feels glad
Because you’re scared they’ll get pulled in with you

That’s what I fear for Derek
That I could pull him back in
That we could go back to sitting around the house
With the windows closed
Rocking back and forth with each other
On the floor in front of the sofa
Crying and saying his name
Looking at his pictures
All over the mantle

I used to come home
From grocery shopping
To find Derek in Mack’s room
Sitting on the bed
Holding onto his jersey
Just staring off into space

And it made me feel…

I didn’t feel alone
Not then
I didn’t

And when things got better for him
They didn’t for me
And that’s when…
That’s when it became hard

And when all the talk of forgiveness started…

I didn’t really want him persecuted
Not at first
It didn’t matter to me
What good would it do?

But then when everybody
Starting taking this stance
That he should just be
Cleared of everything

That’s when I got angry
Because everyone was supposed to be angry
Not just me
And suddenly I had to be angry for everybody
And that just made me furious

It made me ten times worse
Because it was all on me

And suddenly I’m the crazy one
I’m the unforgiving
Bloodthirsty
Bitch

Part of me
To be honest
Almost feels proud

Like I’m proving something
Like I loved my child
More than they loved their children
Because I’m still not over it
And they’re not

I even said that to Derek

‘If you still loved Mack
You wouldn’t be over this.’

I don’t know if there’s any coming back
From something like that
From saying something
That horrible

. . . . .

It’s amazing
I used to be
Optimistic
Think that almost anything
Was possible

I was one of those people
Who thought
That no matter what someone did to me
I could forgive them
Because I was such a kind-hearted person
Because I thought I was, anyway

And now it seems unthinkable
To forgive someone for this
To get past this
It just seems…
There’s no way

There’s just no way

I feel like I’m right
And the world is wrong
And that even if I say
I forgive him
I won’t be saying it for me
I won’t be freeing myself of anything
I’ll just be making the world more comfortable

‘Oh, we can deal with her now
She’s gotten past it.
Excellent.’

Fuck
Them

Fuck Derek
Fuck Charles
Fuck Kerry
Fuck Paul
And fuck you
Because you’re not helping

He was my son
If I want to be mad
I’m going to be mad
If I want blood
I’m going to get blood
If I don’t ever want to be
That kind-hearted
Stupid person
Again
Then I won’t be

. . . . .

It’s like he’s asking me to climb a mountain
I can see the mountain
I can see the top
I know that it’s possible
For me to do it

I know that
Really
It’s just a mountain
People climb mountains all the time

I know that at one time
I had the strength to do it
I knew how
It might have even been easy

I’ve climbed other mountains
I’ve gotten to the top before
And come down
And I should be able
To do it again

But now I look up
And I can’t even see the top
I feel like I could climb forever
And never reach the top
And never come back down

And even if I did
Who would be waiting there for me
At the bottom