Can i ask why you keep your mean ass friend(?) around?? Like genuinely
The simple answer is because she’s my friend and I care about her, but that tends to not be good enough for people so I guess I’ll explain further.
It's inevitable that people will hurt each other, that’s a fact of life. Everyone is constantly learning and growing, and everyone is shaped by their individual experiences and circumstances. You can’t in good faith compare your actions to someone else’s because you haven’t lived their life and they haven’t lived yours. When someone wrongs you, you almost never have all the context, they themselves might not even fully understand why they acted the way they did.
You’ll hurt and be hurt in your lifetime, you can’t change that. What you can change is how you respond to it. I used to be incredibly spiteful and angry because of how people treated me. I stopped trusting everyone, even people who hadn’t done anything to me. I wanted revenge, but when I got it, it never made me feel any better. It actually made me feel worse more often than not, so I stopped chasing after something that was only hurting me more.
I realized that the only way I could feel better was to find it in myself to forgive people, to stop being angry at them. I wasn’t doing myself any favors by holding on to resentment that just reminded me of being hurt. What I was doing was the emotional equivalent of picking at a scab over and over again without ever letting heal.
As for my friend specifically, I’ve been told a hundred times over the years that I shouldn’t talk to her anymore or that she doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. But when I’m the one that was hurt it’s no one’s decision but mine whether or not they’re forgiven. And it’s not my place to forgive someone on another person’s behalf either, but that doesn’t mean I have to hate them. Forgiveness, in my eyes, isn’t about if it’s “deserved” or not. It’s about being able to let go for your own sake.
I believe everyone has good in them, even if they can’t find it on their own. I also believe everyone is wholly capable of change when they have the resources and support that they need. But they won’t ever try if no one gives them the opportunity to be better. That kind of thing doesn’t just happen overnight, it takes time, effort, patience, and understanding from the people around them.
Imagine you were told your whole life that you were a bad person and that that was all you could ever be, how long would it take you to unlearn that? And then how much longer would it take you to gather the strength necessary for change? How much longer after that would it take you to make any real progress? Now imagine no one cares to give any second chances when you make a mistake. Imagine that no one would even acknowledge that you were trying to change, or told you that’s how you always should’ve been. How would that make you feel? Demoralized? Hopeless? Like maybe it isn’t even worth the effort it takes? No one should have to feel like when they genuinely want to better.
