Shut the Door and Walk Away

I was sitting at lunch one day with my mom about a year ago when she told me something that I never wanted to hear. I was coming up on half a year of grieving the death of my friend, which turned me into someone who was always angry with the world. The smallest annoyances would set me off, I cast friends out of my life, and I swore that the trajectory of my life had been altered for the worse. I shut myself in my room for days on end, not only because I was grieving but because I was mad that these were the cards I was dealt. I was upset with my life and was unsatisfied to the extent that nothing mattered anymore. I became unsympathetic towards those around me as there was no way anyone could be having as hard a time as I. How dare someone complain about how stressed they are when they knew what I was going through? I was bitter, insensitive, and a bad friend.

At this point in my life, I also had a relationship that turned sour. At the time of my grief, I was holding on desperately to someone who should have already been in my past. Our relationship had already been withering away, but the second I started grieving the death of my friend, it turned toxic and hurtful. I then spent half a year chasing after something that I thought would fix my sorrow, when all the while it was what was tearing me down. I became cold, distant, and belligerent that I had to go through this on top of the death of my friend. I felt my love was taken for granted and used against me, something I thought was unforgivable.

I was always a realist, but the death of my friend and the events that followed turned me into a person who would pick out the worst parts of something in my life and focus on those instead of the good. The realist in me had become embittered into a pessimist, but I reasoned with myself that this was okay because now I understood how horrible the world was. I had finally seen that being pessimistic was being realistic.

“You don’t look like yourself anymore, Logan,” my mom said to me that day at lunch. I was shocked and bit back the urge to lash out. I hated her for this because she told me what I was always trying to ignore. I argued that this was who I was now, that I was never going to be who I was before because so much was stolen from me. I made excuses and exceptions for my hatred because it was all I had going for me at the moment. I thought it was my fuel, but it was debilitating me. Of course, my mom is perfect at telling me what I refused to see and needed to hear. She told me that I should forgive for no other reason than to save myself from who I was becoming, that forgiveness this time wasn’t for the person or thing I was necessarily forgiving, but that it was for me.

Forgiveness is something that I never focused that much on; it was never something that I thought one could lose the capacity to do. But, the more I’ve thought about forgiveness in connection to my own experiences, the more I’ve realized how my anger led me to cut empathy out of my life in full. I don’t know what I looked like from an outside perspective, but I know I became unhappy with who I was. The deeper you dive into the chasm of resentment and hatred, the harder it is to climb back out—and at this point I was standing at the bottom looking up at all the work I had to do. This advice from my mom was my first step into wondering what my life would be like if I just gave up my anger. What if I just wished my past well?

Moving forward with my life through the act of wishing my past well meant to me that I was to put myself first. My mom’s advice wasn’t to say my anger wasn’t reasonable but rather to prompt me to give it up because it was turning me into an unhappy person. That which torments someone into hatred—in my case, the untimely death of my friend and a failed relationship—almost never deserves this act of generosity in the form of wishing it well, but to wish something well is not to forgive in the common sense of the word but rather to move on with one’s life without what’s weighing one down. This act of wishing what one hates most well serves to save oneself from the hatred that would otherwise consume them. When I was battling with this hatred, I lost myself and instead focused on everything that was wrong with my life. There is the common saying to forgive and forget, but I think the braver thing to do in place of that is to wish someone well. Wishing well gives someone the footing they need to fight for what they deserve. In drawing a distinction between forgiveness and wishing well, forgiveness is enacted when you still have one foot in the door, but wishing something well is for when you’re already outside and waving goodbye.

BY LOGAN BROWN ....

Resenting someone who will never change doesn’t make someone a better person; it just makes them a person who is constantly fighting with the past. It’s commonly said that one can’t change the past, but they also can’t change someone who is stuck in the past, or alternatively, stuck in their past. If one still fosters resentment towards something, they can never truly move on and grow—they will always be focusing on what was wrong and what was right. This will never change, but they can.

No one can ever change what has already happened—no one can change the person who wronged them or the events that are frustrating them, but they can change the energy they put into these wrongs. Wishing well the thing one hates most can be powerful in that one is putting oneself first and refusing to let their anger overpower who they are. I desperately want to change what happened my senior year of high school, but that is now beyond my control—what’s done is done. We are always told to be the bigger person, but in this act of wishing what one hates well, one isn’t necessarily being the bigger person but rather is being selfish in the most liberating way possible. How powerful is it to put yourself first, when understanding you deserve better? Refusing to focus anymore on the negativity allows someone to instead focus on the positivity they want to see out of their life. The moment someone stops focusing on how their friend betrayed them is the moment they can spark new friendships with those who matter.

How can I wish my circumstances well when what happened will never be okay? The answer is it will never be okay. I don’t have to say it’s alright that this happened because it’s not. It’s natural to feel this hatred because to feel this strong emotion is to acknowledge that what you are angry about means something to you. This is the hardest part about moving forward because as much as one wants to right the wrongs, there is no use trying to fix the past. I can’t change my past—I can’t change how my relationship ended or that my friend is dead, but I can look into the future and carry my lessons from these things with me. To me, wishing well means walking away when one doesn’t want to because often that’s the moment it’s most important.

Wishing well is something one does to move on, for they will never forgive and forget. They might never be okay with their experience, but they are walking away because it’s what they need to do. Wishing well isn’t about one forgiving and accepting someone’s wrongdoings to let them back into one’s life—it’s accepting how this will always be the past and that what’s best for them in the present is to move on. Wishing well is understanding that one can’t change what has happened and that they deserve to move forward.

Wishing well in the face of resentment also means looking critically into what I lost and to understand in turn what I have gained. I have lost a great deal: I have lost someone I love who I will never get back, I lost my childhood and what it meant for her to be in my life, and I lost who I was before I went through this immense grief. Wishing well, however, is not to focus on all that I lost, all that failed me, or all that hurt me, but rather, it is to look at that loss and understand that I have come out of this process strong and resilient. I have learned about myself and how to provide support for others immensely. I have learned that I need to love those around me while I still have them. I have learned how I deserve to be treated by those in my life. While bittersweet, this is what I have gained.

In my own experience, wishing what I hated most well meant that I needed to stop fixating on what went wrong because focusing on the past was holding me back from the necessary healing I needed to do. Moving past the problems of my relationship was easier for me than wishing the death of my friend well, which I think goes without saying. When looking into my past relationship, I find myself no longer angry and hateful about what happened, not because it was okay, but because I know that moving past this resentment is the most liberating justice I can give myself. In looking towards the death of my friend, I know I can never just walk away from my past with her, but I can walk away from hatred I got out of my grief, and use this to look towards my future. Wishing well is not the same in these two aspects of my life, because walking away from them means very different things with who I am as a person. Hatred and resentment is a lot of times justified, to a point where I can’t tell everyone how to deal with these emotions. I will never say to forgive your abuser or to be okay with your interactions with your bully—but I will speak from my own perspective that when I finally let go of this resentment I had built up inside me, my world got that much lighter.

I don’t dwell on the past and instead use my experiences to equip me with a more compassionate viewpoint for the future. I smile at strangers again and meet new people with an open mind, and when I step in a puddle, I don’t complain that this is just my luck but laugh it off. Holding in my anger invited it into every aspect of my life, but now I see it draining away. This past year, I hid myself from any more pain and found different ways to cope with my hurt, but wishing my past well has turned me into someone who isn’t scared of getting hurt again but one who knows she can handle it.

It’s impossible to simply choose to be happy, especially when one goes through something so difficult, but I have found so much power manifesting this happiness in my life by letting go. Wishing the things I hated well has not been a one-stop fix for all of the problems in my life, and it certainly hasn’t ended my anger at the world, but it has given me the tools to move forward graciously and gratefully.

I urge everyone to replace forgiveness with wishing whatever you are fighting to forgive, well. Walk away and don’t look back. This may be uncomfortable, but growth stems from this discomfort. To wish someone else well is to wish yourself well in turn. To do something you never wanted to do but needed to do is powerful. To give up this shield of hatred is to let yourself open up to a world of acceptance. To wish someone else well is not for them, but for you. In a world of hatred, be resistant. And then in the world of resistance, wish people well.