I forgive the pain and the disappointments,
I forgive the betrayals and the lies,
I forgive the slanders and the intrigues,
I forgive the hatred and the persecution,
I forgive the blows that hurt me,
I forgive the wrecked dreams,
I forgive the stillborn hopes,
I forgive the hostility and jealousy,
I forgive the indifference and ill will,
I forgive the injustice carried out in the name of justice,
I forgive the anger and the cruelty,
I forgive the neglect and the contempt,
I forgive the world and all its evils." -Aleph by Paulo Coelho (page 156-157)
Paulo Coelho writes about his own self and the people he meets in this lifetime, and in his other lifetimes. I do the same. I write about the people I've met, had relationships with, or those who simply touched a nerve or an emotion in me. Since I started going back to writing a manuscript a couple of months ago (the first one I wrote while I was in college is now lost in my old PC's busted hard drive that I can't access anymore), all I ever wrote about was a certain guy. My friends call him THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY. I call him, THE ONE WHO NEVER SAID GOODBYE. After reading Paulo Coelho's Aleph, I was at a lost. For certain, I know I don't love the guy anymore. I am in a happy and healthy relationship with the man I know God has made to be mine. So why is there this unexplainable feeling that has something to do with the one who never said goodbye?
My Bible says there is no other lifetimes than the one I'm living now. That there is no such thing as getting reincarnated into a cockroach if you don't do well in this lifetime. But why am I thinking, "What if, in another lifetime, he also left me without even saying goodbye? Should I fix it in this lifetime?"
I never wanted to finish reading Aleph. First few chapters and I already know it's going to be just like Eat Pray Love all over again. Eat Pray Love got me. It got me crying in my sleep. It even got me crying alone inside the moviehouse when I went to watch the movie alone. Yes, I watched it alone because I didn't want anyone seeing me cry over a Julia Roberts movie about finding one's self across three countries. The time I was reading the book, I already knew that the movie will make me cry. I watched it anyway. I guess you can call me a sucker for hurting myself. The first few chapters of the book Eat Pray Love made me want to throw it across the room, not because it was poorly written or something but because of all the names she can use, it has to be the name of the guy who never said goodbye. Could it be fate or some random circumstance that these 2 books (Eat Pray Love and Aleph) that were given to me by friends should remind me of him? With Eat Pray Love, I never got an answer. With Aleph, I did.
I asked myself, why is he the subject of my writings? Why is he always the protagonist/antagonist in the short stories I write? And why is he still the sun of my literary universe? Is it because I believe he is the one that got away and that all my literary works should be about him? Or is it because a part of me is still hurting because I cannot love him? Or is it because a part of me is still hurting that he cannot and will never love me the same way I loved him? Aleph gave me one simple answer but the truest of all the answers I've heard from a lot of people and books I've read.
I HAVE NOT FORGIVEN. Forgiven myself for falling in love with him and allowing myself to get hurt and forgiven him for leaving me stranded a number of times and never saying goodbye. My most favorite definition of the word FORGIVENESS is "giving up the right to hurt someone for hurting you" but I never really relinquished that right when it comes to him. I still want to hurt him, to show him how much pain he caused me, and how much he messed up my heart. A big day is fast approaching come December and I can't afford for that day to finally come with excess baggage I can't seem to get away from. Everytime I try to throw away that baggage, it manages to creep up behind me, waiting for the next time to show up right infront of my face. What should I do then? Unlike Hilal in the book Aleph, I was never able to talk to the man who hurt me. In the book, Paulo met Hilal, the woman he loved five hundred years before, but whom he betrayed in an act of cowardice. They met, journeyed together towards forgiveness and finding peace with the past. I, on the other hand, am alone in this journey of finding peace with my past and finally finding forgiveness. Anyone can try to help me forgive but will never be really successful in doing so. Listening to songs that will remind me of him on the loop will never help either. Until I opened my Bible to a verse that speaks well of forgiveness. Matthew 18:21-35 speaks about The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. It's last line says:
"unless you forgive your brother from your heart..."
Forgiving from the bottom of my heart. Easy to say, but never easy to do. I grew up always getting even when someone offended me or angered me or hurt me. But this time, it's different. Forgiving him is not something I'm doing only for myself. It's something I'm doing for myself and for the man I love. Reading the Bible verse reminded me that in the past, I have turned my back on my first love, my unconditional love, the one great God who went down from His throne in heaven to forgive me of my sins and to restore me to eternal life with Him. I hurt Him, caused Him pain, yet He went down His throne to forgive me and to love me just the same as if I have never caused Him any pain. For the first time in my life since the early morning December 5, 2009 (the last time I saw him and talked to him in person), my heart is at ease, at peace. It took me this long to realize that moving on doesnt only mean freeing yourself from the love you once felt for a person, or pushing back the memories you both once made at the back of your memory storage so as not to be able to touch them again, or throwing away things that remind you of the person. Moving on should start and end with FORGIVING. Forgiving yourself, and forgiving the other person. Only then will you will finally be able to set each other free. For others, it takes a fraction of a second to forgive while for most of us, it would take months, even years to finally be able to fully, wholeheartedly forgive. It's never a walk in the park, this forgiving thing. For most of the time, it's like a rollercoaster ride. One day you feel like forgiving someone, while the next day you will feel totally the opposite. You might loathe the other person, or feel mad or angry the next. It is never the same feeling unless you forgive your brother from your heart just like what the parable says.
