F*ck Forgiveness
I want to let you in on a secret: I can still fuck with you and never forgive you for something you’ve done. In fact, I consistently do. I may tell you; I may not. I see the small things you do to myself and others. I take note of the inconsistencies of your behavior. I watch how you manipulate people and try to hide the aspects of yourself you think people will judge. I pay attention to the ways your words both do and do not match your actions. I see you as you are and assess how you treat others. And then I determine how close I will allow you to be to me because the harm you think you’re hiding isn’t actually hidden. You’ve just convinced yourself it is.
People have this idea that forgiveness is required. It’s not. Whether I associate with you again depends on several factors — am I being paid to work with you? Are you a relative? Were we friends at one time? Were you a lover? I’ve continued sleeping with men who’ve cheated on me because they were convenient, but they were never considered partner-worthy ever again; they were the toilet of my libido. I’ve continued being friendly with people who betrayed me; we’re no longer friends and I don’t share shit with them but we can tolerably occupy the same shared spaces. I’ve done group projects both in school and at the office with people I know won’t pull their weight; I assign them the least responsibility because I need the work done more than I need this shit to be fair. There are trash people who constantly have limited access to me. I watch them and wait for them to do what they will inevitably do — try to cross a hard boundary. That’s when the limited access you had becomes no access and you will feel it. Once you make me angry, you never get the chance to pretend to earn my trust back.
You cannot earn back my trust or my forgiveness. Every time I’m forced to associate with you, I remember that you aren’t worthy of either. Your actions are constantly interwoven into who you are — the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly. Life teaches you that anyone is capable of everything, regardless of what they say, and once I have evidence, that becomes part of the whole of you. It doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of being kind; plenty of terrible people have exercised moments of kindness. It doesn’t mean you never do selfless things; people are complicated and your selflessness does not erase all the harm you’ve done throughout your life — intentional or unintentional. The one thing I never forget is that we are living in a predatory society, which means that harmful, self-interested, even cruel acts are normal for us and it takes intent, reflection, accountability, remorse, and reparations to begin to counter this environment. What it doesn’t take is forgiveness and anyone seeking that shit is attempting to manipulate the narrative to accommodate their self-interested bullshit.
Regardless of whether your harm is intentional, you are accountable for it and that accountability requires reflection. It requires looking at the whole of you — including the predatory, selfish, and ugly. It means owning the results of your actions and taking responsibility for them — a painful but necessary endeavor. I’ve grown up in a society where giving people the benefit of the doubt puts me in direct danger and to survive, I’ve discarded that filter that softens the horror of who and what people are. When you associate with me, you get to see what I see, which is often all of you, something that many people are completely unprepared to experience because they hate the idea that others can see their ugly. They refuse to own the ugliness they harbor. They spend days, weeks, months, even years trying to convince everyone around them that their ugly doesn’t exist. Often, their attempts to hide their ugly is what makes them uglier but their arrogance lets them think they’re too smart to be seen. They think they are outsmarting everyone around them when really, it is this society whose morality is shaped by predators and monsters enabling their deception. A society that gaslights its population into ignoring the heinous acts of those around them, allowing them to hide in plain sight while we convince ourselves of the nobility of looking away. We’ve moralized and normalized into automatically giving the benefit of the doubt; we’ve created a culture where allowing second chances is the hallmark of “nice” people. Nice is now the catchall for ill-intent masked as well-meaning ignorance and this carefully cultivated language protects abusers from accountability and consequences of the horrors they’ve committed…the horrors you’ve committed.
Forgiveness has no place in a world full of willful predators and we are not immune to engaging in predatory behavior ourselves. If you are a member of a marginalized community, I suggest you kill the desire to forgive with as much violence you can muster. Your forgiveness keeps you both malleable and culpable. It keeps you vulnerable and harmful. It makes you a victim and an abuser again and again and again. Stop hiding your pain and your violence in the lies of forgiveness and instead hold yourself and the people around you accountable for the words that say and the harms they do. Sit with the horror of what was done to you and what you have also done. Learn why it was wrong. Make amends with no expectation of forgiveness. Grow from that shit and work to become a better person as a result.
Forgiveness is today’s currency for fuckery and it has no value to the oppressed, only the oppressors. Refuse to entertain that shit on every level. Expect better then fucking do better otherwise we’re doomed to repeat the horrors of the now.
No one is entitled to forgiveness. No one deserves forgiveness; not even ourselves. We have to create our personal and public spaces to address our mistakes, accept our punishments, reflect on our actions, resolve to do better, make reparations to those we harmed, share our lessons, and adjust both our intentions and actions to reflect this new knowledge. That is what growth is.
We’re living in a society that refuses to grow. We are seeing how terrible we are to and for one another. The backlash to accountability, the nonsense of “cancel culture” being weaponized by gatekeepers to justify and protect themselves from the repercussions of their actions…none of this is unintentional. None of this is misguided innocence. All of this is an intentional attack for people to maintain their power in this society. Do not fall for the bullshit. Call it out. Demand accountability. Demand reparations. In no time has any corrupt society fixed itself. The overwhelming will of the people will force change. But that will never happen if you keep pretending these acts are not malicious and offering forgiveness. There can be no forgiveness when their actions are robbing people of their lives.
We deserve and need to do better than that.
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Originally published at https://talynnkel.com on July 19, 2020.
