There's no reason to be assured.

Hmm. I'm gonna talk about forgiveness for a minute here
Mostly because i have no concept of what that means.

I .. think.. i was raised to beleive that forgiveness meant figuring out how to make the best of a bad situation, how to change yourself and your emotions and thoughts to accept the person, see things from their perspective and not hold their degradation of you against them. Y'know, we're all just human, if you don't 'get over' what happened, then you're going to end up bitter and disappointed and lonely. GOd forgave all the shit we pulled, so we'd better forgive all the shit other people pull.

I'm hoping that forgiveness means something else, or i'm pretty much ready to throw the entire concept of forgiveness out the fucking window. Because so far as i can figure it, forgiveness means not accepting your emotions and experiences and struggles as valid and instead subjugating yourself further to your assailants/oppressors in the name of "being the bigger person" which is a pretty fuckt concet in and of itself.

lemme tell you: If someone hurts me, I don't have to "let" them hurt me again. it does not make me "just as bad" to refuse to be around them or to tell them to fuck off when they try to tell me why i'm WRONG about them. I don't have to talk it out, i don't have to help them heal, i don't have to tell myself that i can't heal unless i learn not to be angry. If someone hurts me, i have the right to anger. I have the right to have boundaries with them. I have the right to do what i need to do to take back what they stole. And if I pull some asshat shit on someone and hurt/assault/oppress them, they have every right to do the same.

So it seems to me, that in the absence of forgiveness, people just hafta learn not to be jerx. 'cause in the absence of forgiveness, you have to face yourself and no one's going to pretend you don't look like an asshole.