I’ve never personally found that forgiveness was something I could do directly. It’s all well and good to know something intellectually, but I could never just decide to forgive anyone any more than I could just decide to be happy in the midst of a depression. Both things always happened for me as a by-product of otherwise purposeful conduct.

You practice self-care, do the **** that’s supposed to help even though it sucks and doesn’t seem to be helping: Exercise, eat right, don’t smoke. Enjoy responsibly. Get a hobby. Take your pills. Do unto others. Don’t stop believing. Always wear a rubber. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You just do the ****, and one day you’re surprised to discover you’ve been so busy doing what one does that haven’t thought about how much you hate that person and how very wronged you are all day. Then all week. And one day you think about it and discover the hate, the vitriol, the pain, it’s muted. It hurts less. You try to call up the intensity of emotion you once felt, and nothing much happens. You find that you’re just not very interested in it, that it doesn’t hold so much power over you, because by god you’ve got some boneless, skinless chicken breasts to steam.

And when you’re more interested in ****ing chicken breast than in the gross injustice someone once visited upon you, you realize it’s because somewhere in the midst of all that lather-rinse-repeating, you’ve forgiven them.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents.