Mama Marina

Letter to a past self

A few weeks ago, this popped up in my Facebook memories from 14 years ago–back when Facebook was the new LiveJournal. 

I want to see the best in everyone.  It really is that simple.  Perhaps it’s naive, but I still want to believe that people are generally good.  That even though we make mistakes, hurt people we love, and more often than not care more about ourselves than those around us, we do it with the best of intentions.  I dole out second chances and forgiveness like I’m stocked with an endless supply, but don’t we all have our limits?  Should we accept half-hearted apologies (or even none at all) and simply forgive?  How does anyone avoid becoming cynical and detached?  Are the people that are unaffected any better off?  I’m inclined to say not.  There’s something incredibly rewarding about caring for others, being there in their time of need, sharing in good times and bad times.  But at what point is the disappointment no longer worth it?  Where do you draw the line?

I was a 24-year-old codependent with just one session of therapy under my belt four years prior, which I naturally used to validate my decision to give up free on-campus housing so I could live off-campus with an abusive boyfriend.

When I posted this musing on forgiveness in 2011, I was in an era of providing absolutely no context while seeking attention (or, the self-compassionate translation: chasing connection). At some point, I must have received the same notification about this memory, and I was embarrassed enough to turn it private. As embarrassed as I was in 2011 telling guys at bars I was an early-20s divorcée, which I believed at the time was the most interesting thing about me.

Now I’m 38 years old, a twice-divorced mom of three, and a therapist. I’m also a writer, and for the past year, I’ve been working on my first memoir, which will be about:

[insert drumroll]

Healing from relational trauma and disorganized attachment (aka, C-PTSD)

How did I do it? Well, the long answer is enough to fill a book I hope at least a few people read someday. The short answer is that I started looking at the younger versions of myself the way I did my own young children.

This got me pondering what I would say back to that young woman who (unbeknownst to her) was on the precipice of entering her lifetime’s most codependent relationship.

One that would be as intoxicating as it was dysfunctional. One that would fully traumatize her before it catalyzed her healing. One she would see through to the very “death do us part” ending, just two years later. She would leave it a survivor of suicide loss, clinging to forgiveness and loyalty like badges of honor while others in a support group spoke of the anger they couldn’t move past.

Nope, not her. 

Though his final act was to leave her holding the bag for a decision she’d several times wrestled from his hands, literally, she forgave him as easily as the time he was too hungover to attend her birthday party. She couldn’t have told you why anger eluded her every time she read back those final text messages instead of deleting them.

But thankfully, this version of me does, and I can’t wait to tell her in the only way she would have listened 14 years ago. Via harsh truths she’d reject and then resent while it fueled her fire to prove me wrong. And, of course, metaphor soaked in booze, dressed in nostalgia, and adorned with Swifty Easter eggs.

~

Dear Too Forgiving,

You are not, in fact, too forgiving. The truth is… you’re not even all that forgiving. Like, at all. What you describe here is emotional avoidance dressed up as a compassion hangover.

I know, I know. How dare I take aim at an identity you’ve built brick by brick like a TikTok algorithm. But the world has changed, and so have you. And so, it’s okay that my TikTok reference will make about as much sense as the rest of this letter does.

You see (well, you will see), “doling out [endless] chances” is hardly the gift you think it is. When you treat “forgiveness” as a balance to be settled like an open tab, of course you’re disappointed by the end of the proverbial night. Because nobody’s thrilled to sign when the check arrives. Some, like the popular kid at your 20-year reunion who buys everyone shots, will baptize the check in tears and skip the tip.

And yeah, more than a few of them motherfuckers will give you the ol’ Irish goodbye, and you’ll want to send the bill to Mr. Perfectly Fine’s mother. And you could, but she won’t pay it either. You’ll convince yourself this is because she hates you, and though sometimes she might (like if she ever reads this letter), the reality is the debt they’ve inherited is far greater than the one you willingly took on. So remember that the next time you insist on cosigning for another person’s healing.

And I know what you’re thinking… “Dear God, I did become cynical and detached.” And you would be half wrong. Or, rather… you would be partially correct. 

[ It’s time you learn the value of a positive reframe ]

Generally, people do the best they can in any given moment, even when they hurt you. More often than not, their intentions toward you are not negative. In fact, most of the time…

Actually, I need to hold your hand while I say this next part.

Most of the time, you don’t factor into their decisions at all. Not even a little bit. That’s right. Most of the time, people are not thinking about you or your feelings. 

Their intentions toward you are just… neutral. Because they, like you, are consumed by themselves and their own feelings. We can call that “selfish,” the word I’m certain you must have typed and then erased a thousand times while drafting your post. Or, since most of us exist in this space most of the time, we can graciously call it our shared humanity.

“Most of the time, people are not thinking about you or your feelings.”

This might seem like nitpicking in nuance, but I promise, there’s a point. You can choose to see this as proof you’re on your own, kid. Or you can accept the gift of freedom in knowing no one noticed, much less remembers, what keeps you up at night. Even better… All the mean things you imagine people say when you leave the room are likely just the voice in your head being a dick. And, guess what: even if they are saying them, that’s not your wound to heal.

Someday soon, you’ll give real therapy a shot after finding a therapist whose website says he specializes in your new boyfriend’s diagnosis (yes, you do finally get a boyfriend, and yes, of course, you start therapy to save him). 

When this male therapist makes a flippant, critical remark about your codependence, you’ll at least realize you deserve better than having to pay the person making you feel small. You won’t even ghost that asshole. One week later, you’ll tell him right to his face that you’re too smart to exchange money for validation you’ll know is unearned. And we have to celebrate the small wins because progress is progress. 

Nonetheless, that’ll be the last time you ask your boyfriend’s work bestie to cover for him drinking himself into a grippy-sock vacay. And again, progress is progress.

And this is how I know you’ll hear these words as deeply as you hate them. How I know you’re still pissed off that I started this letter by saying your forgiveness is rooted in emotional avoidance. Because shouldn’t I–more than anyone–know you’ve been drowning in The Feels since memory formed?

And yes, I do–(all too well). And so do at least a dozen, much better therapists since that guy.

None of these therapists will tell you the truth as brutally as I do in this letter, and ultimately, that’s a good thing. But since Past You begged the question in earnest, Present Me shall return the answer in kind (but not kindness).

• Codependency is not forgiveness of others. It’s a graveyard of anger turned inward. It forces you to see the good in literally anyone but yourself. Not because self-deprecation is saintly or noble or even all that funny in the present tense, but because it’s survival.

• This “over-forgiving” part of your “personality”… Well, it’s nothing more than a coping mechanism. One that provides the illusion of peace inside chaos you refuse to leave behind.

• You fear the absence of chaos because you’ve never known it, not because it’s actually scary or lonely. It’s not even as boring as you think.

“Codependency is not forgiveness of others. It’s a graveyard of anger turned inward.”

• Those who say children are resilient are lying. Children aren’t resilient; they’re adaptive. And small brains that adapt to control chaos grow into bigger brains that have to release control to feel safe inside peace. Trust me, it’s science.

• Now before you go draft invites to your next pity party, this doesn’t mean you are broken. In fact, it means you are (im)perfectly ordinary. Your brain and your body are doing exactly what they’ve evolved to do: keep you alive.

• Even on days you wish it didn’t, you genuinely want to live. Your brain is just convinced every curt text message is a death threat, and yeah… that does kind of suck. K? But here’s the good news: it’s temporary, and you can tolerate it.

• Though a jacked-up nervous system is an unfortunate birthright, only you can anoint yourself the architect of your own suffering.

Which leads me back to the questions you posed about forgiveness… 

• Forgiveness is not an open door for others to come and go as they please. It’s liberation from a room you’ve decorated with your pain and labeled home. It’s freedom from the prison of your own perspective. It’s an open sky with enough space to hold another’s truth without making it yours. Some might say it’s a state of grace bigger than the whole sky.

• A relationship without truth and accountability can only offer appeasement, which is neither love nor forgiveness. It’s manipulation of someone else’s feelings to avoid having to face your own.

• Bypassing anger to appease others only delays the lesson. Anger is the body’s cue to either grow in acceptance or to fortify your boundaries. What we resist persists. What we avoid will chase. What we ignore will scream. And anger demands to be heard.

“Forgiveness is… liberation from a room you’ve decorated with your pain and labeled home.”

• Anger speaks Your Truth, not The Truth. It will not be denied its turn to speak, but its words do not have legs even when it shows its sharpest teeth. Sometimes it needs tamed. Other times, to be aimed in the direction of peace. Often, both. And always, to be seen and understood by you, if no one else.

• You are not the road to healing for anyone but yourself. When you try to love someone into growth instead of loving from a place of acceptance, understand you are now part of the pattern they need to heal.

“What we resist persists. What we avoid will chase. What we ignore will scream. And anger demands to be heard.”

• I hope reading this letter makes you feel angry, and you allow yourself to feel it. Because you have always deserved truth delivered in softness. 

• Someday, you’ll learn to hear truth in softness, and though not the point, you will help others do the same. Not by rescuing. Not with self-sacrifice. Simply by holding space and teaching others how to round the edges of their own jagged truths.

~

Okay, it’s time to take a deep breath. And I’ll never understand why we gatekeep the path to healing, so I’ll go ahead and let you in on a secret.

Breathe in for four.

Hold for seven.

Breathe out for eight.

Then have another round.

Allowing air in is the smallest part; holding and releasing are what free you from the chokehold of your nervous system.

~

Alright, back to the topic at hand: Forgiveness.

If only more of us did have limits to how poorly we’ll be treated. Experts these days predict that 90% of Americans have codependent patterns. If we’re grading on a curve though, don’t worry, you would definitely rank near the top. Go big, or go home, amiright?

And fuck no, you shouldn’t accept half-assed apologies, especially the ones that got lost in the mail. Except sometimes. And maybe. Let’s just say, it depends what you mean by accept. Let’s take it to the FAFO board.

As you can clearly see, it’s not that hard to figure out. JK. It’s a mind-fucking minefield, and we’re all on somebody’s board. Not including you, but especially you.

So yes, simply forgive anyway. Because forgiveness is not the same thing as repair. The former only requires you to change, and repair without the other person’s participation is living on emotional breadcrumbs. When emotionally hangry, life is just misery in company, not connection.

Now that that’s settled. Let’s turn to this business of cynical versus detached. If pairing “cynical” with “detached” wasn’t enough to tell me you presently have a thin grasp on detachment (no offense), your conclusion one would need to avoid detachment nailed it home. 

Girl, listen. That’s like asking how anyone avoids becoming a billionaire pop star who everyone–from little girls to grown men–inexplicably starts calling Mother while trading friendship bracelets with strangers. People live off little more than soup and silence, sitting still in the desert just to temporarily live in detachment. 

So, I don’t know. Do literally anything else. Go to a coffee shop and wait in line just to find out they’re out of caramel syrup. Turn on the TV and hate-watch the Kardashians while they ugly-cry about champagne problems. Go eat Mexican food with your friends and bitch about your jobs and their boyfriends. The possibilities are endless.

Next, we get to the crux of the misunderstanding. Are those who are “unaffected any better off?” Oof. That’s a bit of a logical leap. Detaching doesn’t mean we sacrifice caring about our loved ones. We can even grieve in detachment, so long as we accept the pain that arrives will also leave us. Some people cling to its absence. Others, like you, take it to bed and cook it breakfast in the morning.

When is the disappointment no longer worth forgiving others? I think you’re asking the wrong question. At what point is peace worth releasing what others do with your forgiveness? And the answer to that is… whenever you are ready. Last call for suffering is whenever you’d like it to be.

“We can even grieve in detachment, so long as we accept the pain that arrives will also leave us.”

To answer your final question… Yes, lines must be drawn. Sometimes we need to draw the line at the threshold of our front doors and the ends of telephone lines. Most necessary (sometimes painfully so), these are the ones whose peace and ours cannot commingle in time. We wish them well in healing, sending love in spirit but not form, and we grieve with peace. 

Most often, thankfully, the line is on the borders of our minds and in the boundaries we set for ourselves. Someday, you’ll learn something so revolutionary it will make you feel like the dumbest person in the room. Apparently, no one can make you feel anything. Who knew?

The first time you hear this, you’ll think the mid-60s divorced woman at the meditation retreat is the closest you’ve ever come to God. While talking about her ex-husband’s infidelity, she’ll say, “I hated him for how much he hurt me. But then I realized, he was only responsible for hurting me once. I was the one who made myself miserable a thousand times after that, each time I retold myself that same story and made it about me.”

“Last call for suffering is whenever you’d like it to be.”

The next epiphany will arrive in intensive outpatient therapy the spring you decide to get sober. Your therapist will have a Shakespearean name and the type of gravitas you admire from afar but fear when it’s in the same room. And there it is and so is she… four feet away on a sofa chair, asking why you fear your own anger. You’ll own the fear but deny there’s anger beneath it. Then the next day, you’ll return with four handwritten pages that read like a map of half-buried hatchets.

A second-semester grad school dropout, you’ll linger on the feeling you would’ve, could’ve, should’ve been a therapist too. This mastermind of a therapist reads you like a book and tells you to stop studying the others in group and actually participate. She’ll define participation as being “vulnerable,” which will make you gag but put away your notebook. Eventually, you’ll cry in front of strangers and live to tell the tale no one else remembers but you.

At discharge, your therapist will hand you the letter to re-enroll in school and predict you’ll be a “good” therapist someday. Then she’ll add, “But you’ll be a great one if you heal.” It hits different–not like criticism. Still, you know you’ve never settled for good when great was possible (and I suspect she did too).

For a long time, you will still choose comfort over healing. Then, like clockwork, the memory of this comment returns to resurrect that bone-deep wound of not-enoughness, and you push forward. You’ll begin again. And again. Until one day, you’ve healed enough to know that “good” was always good enough. And you’ll still choose healing anyway.

Sorry, not sorry,

Det-A-ched