We cannot look at the wrongs people have done to us as debts,
or we will always feel they owe us something.
We won’t be able to see any good they bring,
no matter how small, beneath the eternal shadow of those dues.

Whatever thing they have done has
left a hole that cannot be filled with gestures, money or things.
What people don’t tell you
is that these feed the hole,
make it bigger and hungrier inside you.

No one can make something that’s happened, unhappen.
We can only choose whether to forgive,
and they can only, slowly, try to replace
the memories we have of them with better ones, if we let them.
Only if we choose to let them.

So if you choose to let them,
do not think of it as repayment, as something you are owed.
Tell them instead why you have forgiven them, what that means to you.
Tell them about the hole and how it hurts, and maybe, they won’t disappoint you.

Maybe they can grow to fill your life with
something that may otherwise have been missing.
Maybe their words and their growth
can help make the hole feel smaller,
over time.

Or maybe they’re not ready.
Maybe neither of you ever will be and if that’s the case, you must be ready to let them go.
For both of you to wind along separate paths, farther and farther apart.
Until the echoes of their voice in your memory are so distant
that you question whether the sound you hear when you think of them,
even still resembles their voice at all.