Forgive and Forget—or Just Move On?
Grappling with the complexities of forgiveness in the face of trauma and revenge.
By Mark Dixon
I’ll never forget seeing a stranger repeatedly bash my sister with a baseball bat as I watched from the ground where the stranger had thrown me.
I looked at my sister, and I could see her change with each blow. What started as defiance became fear, and then acceptance. There was no escape.
“One day I am going to kill you!” I yelled.
Rushing at him a second time only to be thrown to the ground again, I vowed to myself that he would pay for his cruelty, even though my 6-year-old mind had no idea how. Afterwards, I helped my sister home, but pieces of our innocence remained at the spot where she was attacked.
The first nightmare came a few days after the assault. Each time the nightmare replayed itself, I relived my sister's attacker striking her arms and legs with his baseball bat. The thud of the bat thumping against her arms and legs. Her twisting and fighting to avoid the blows. Me, being tossed to the ground when I tried to help. The dream played over and over again in my head until my dreamself grew large enough to stop the attack.
That attack on my sister hatched a venomous cobra inside me. It hissed and coiled itself tightly waiting to strike some day. That day occurred a few years later, when I was 9 years old. The rage from my sister’s attack—that venomous cobra—struck out, and I beat another kid so brutally that police assumed I used a weapon. They questioned me and considered taking me to the police station. Even though they did not, I didn’t escape the consequences. The rage remained inside of me. Over time, the memory of my sister being attacked receded to the back of my mind. However, the rage never lost its venom.
Adding to its danger was the fact that I couldn’t recognize that the rage was there. I grew up in violent neighborhoods where shootings and murder happened regularly. Living like this, I learned to see violence as little more than an unpleasant part of daily life. I became numb to the idea of violence and stopped seeing it as dangerous. And I did not see myself as dangerous until, eventually, that coiled cobra inside me led me to be the aggressor, and I ended up in prison.
Before the attack on my sister, I remember asking my mom why people hurt each other. Not wanting to spoil my innocence, she let the question go unanswered. When my sister was attacked, I realized one answer to my question: Some people hurt others to protect themselves and the people they love. I wanted to hurt the stranger who hurt my sister.
Years later, during a life skills class, I learned an even more profound reason: “Hurt people hurt people.” This class was taught to a room full of convicted felons in prison. The message was intended to help us see that the pain we’d endured in life had caused us to hurt others. Learning that motivated me to look through the windows of my life. When I did, I got a clear look at the trauma that I experienced when my sister was attacked. I could see that the rage from that attack, growing inside me, had turned me into the aggressor starting at age 9, and I had continued to play that role.
Seeing myself as the aggressor brought on feelings of regret. I always thought of myself as someone who protected people from bullies, not as the one who caused problems. The realization sat on me like a weight, and my only hope of removing that weight would be to change. Up until that point, I had always looked at the tough parts of my journey as something to forget. Once I learned how trauma affects mental health, I knew that healing would mean looking my past in the eyes.
But was I ready to face my past?
The question loomed in my mind. I wasn’t sure if dealing with my past would bring relief, or if it would re-traumatize me. But ready or not, I chose to face it, and the first step was to ask my sister for forgiveness.
I told her about my guilt and asked her to forgive me for not being able to protect her. Tears fell onto my cheeks as we talked, and relief washed over me. Her forgiveness opened the door for me to let go of some of the guilt and forgive myself.
Then came the hard part. Could I forgive my sister's attacker?
I knew that forgiving him would probably help me to heal faster. I knew that he was probably a victim himself, which meant I could understand his pain. I even knew forgiving him would be the right thing to do.
Yet, I still couldn’t forgive what he’d done. I didn’t even know if my sister‘s attacker wanted forgiveness. Had he made positive change? Had he realized the brutality of his actions and repented? Without knowing these things, I truly couldn’t forgive him.
But what I could do was learn to let go of the rage. What the life skills class taught me was that I wasn’t required to hold onto the pain. My sister's attack was just one moment in my journey, and in ignorance I had allowed it to follow me for years afterward to the point where my cruelty began to resemble that of my sister’s attacker. When that life skills class helped me look into my past, I got a clear look at how my past was poisoning my future. That’s when I decided, no more!
People say you have to forgive and forget in order to heal. I could not do either. But what I could do is move on and release the cobra inside of me that was poisoning me and causing so much harm. I could allow my healing to find its own path and take me to a place of release. I could watch as the snake slithered out of my life forever.
