How to Forgive

Over the course of the past year, I've had more people than I care to admit ask me how I can have such a good attitude about my situation. I can always answer honestly that I know exactly how I've been able to manage it. I can be happy and optimistic about my situation because I've learned how to forgive. It was no small task, I assure you, especially considering the fact that I've never considered myself a forgiving person. But unless you want to spend the rest of your life poisoning yourself with hate and anger, you have to let it go. I understand why most people can't do it, because it was really hard, and there were many times along the way that people questioned my actions. But it didn't matter, because I knew that the way I was doing it would eventually lead to forgiveness. But how? Now, what I'm going to say may sound strange, but the way I did this was by following the Kubler-Ross Model (also known as the "Five Stages of Grief" from Death and Dying). Let me explain:

Stage One: Denial
I didn't want him to have a problem as much as he didn't want a problem, I think. I justified the fact that he drank a lot by the irrational, and completely incorrect assumption that alcohol was his only problem. I denied the fact that he had a problem at all, while also denying that this was eventually going to be the end of us. "Sure, honey, borrow the car. Go hang out with your friends. You didn't come home until 5am? Oh, you fell asleep on G's couch? Oh, that's all right. I'm sure you're telling me the truth." Let's face it. No newly-pregnant woman wants to admit that she's about to be left in a lurch.

Stage Two: Anger
When the proverbial sh** did hit the fan, and the evidence was in front of my face, I turned from denial to anger. I wasn't nice anymore, and he noticed. I started name-calling and friend-bashing. I said things to him that I knew would hit him deep down and make him resent me, and it was worse than that, it made me resent myself. I wrote him letters detailing what kind of scum I thought he was, and what a terrible person he was for doing this to the woman carrying his child. If I knew then what I know now, I would've stopped in my tracks, because he already hated himself more than I could ever hate him.

Stage Three: Bargaining
Most of the time in this stage, people bargain with themselves or God. Not me. This is when people started to question what I was thinking, but I knew what I was doing...anything I could to make him better. I bargained with him. I told him that if he got better, we would get back together and be a family. That he could have a relationship with his daughter, and that I would help him mend his relationship with his family. Even after the threats and accusations, and the evidence that he'd lied to me repeatedly, I was still willing to forgive, and even take him back. I eventually realized that I wasn't bargaining, I was begging. I didn't want to admit that it was time, for the sake of me and my unborn daughter, to raise the white flag.

Stage Four: Depression
I won't go into this too much, because it's pretty self explanatory (and also because thinking of this time in my life makes me melancholy). It was a sad sight: Picture a pregnant woman curled up in the fetal position crying next to the window. Not because she's hormonal, but because she's starting to come to the realization that there's nothing she can do to save a person and a relationship that doesn't want to be saved. While it was very sad, this, my friends, is a huge turning point in the process.

Stage Five: Acceptance
This is by far the hardest stage. Probably because the previous four stages don't just happen once before you get to the acceptance stage; they happen over and over again until you're ready to accept your situation. I went from anger back to denial, over to depression, back to bargaining (I bargained with him up until 3 weeks before I delivered!!). But in the end, I had to accept that he couldn't be who I needed him to be, and I needed to be someone else now: Emma's mommy.

What's really important here is that even after I reached the Acceptance Stage, I still allowed myself to revisit the other stages every once in a while. Forgiving doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt sometimes, or that I have forgotten the past exists. It just means, at least to me, that I've accepted the situation for what it is, and am ready to move on from it...What happens next is totally up to me! So when you find yourself at the beginning of the end, let yourself fall. Let yourself scream and cry and come up with every excuse possible to hang onto a little hope. And then, when the time comes, accept it...that's how to forgive.