Contemplating forgiveness

While most people save their depressive periods for holidays or the spring, circumstances have made August the toughest month of the year for me, and the hardest time to live in Greensboro. Living in one city for the entire span of my life to date has given me a certain kind of perspective and certain kinds of opportunities, but it also means that streets are paved with memories... after a while, even the good ones can be haunting.

This August, as I realize in a typically jarring manner that my life celebration day is a mere 10 days away, I've been thinking about forgiveness and the strange ways it plays out in so many of our lives. I've forgiven the ex who cheated on me, but not the friend who provided a rendezvous point for the trysts. More relevant to my August revelries, I've forgiven the ex who attacked me, but not the people who chose to let the crisis pass silently, rather than risk the uncomfortable and uncharted territory of addressing domestic abuse.

My rational self understands it to an extent. There was a reason I loved those exes in the first place and some vague memory of the reason has allowed me to eventually look past what they did. (Naturally, cheating was a much shorter process to reconcile than near-fatal violence.) And though I loved, and in some cases still do love, many of the people who I felt abandoned me... I don't know how to end that sentence... perhaps the conclusion lies somewhere in the difference between romantic love and platonic/familial love?

I'll mull it over for a couple more weeks until my life celebration day has come and gone. It'll cross my mind a time or two over the course of the year until next August, when the whole thing kicks me in the stomach again. What I've learned and how amazing my life is now truly and honestly make it all worthwhile but I hope that someday, August will come and go and all I will notice is the heat.