I've needed more forgiveness than most people will ever know. From my parents, who watched their son turn into someone they didn't recognize. From friends who stopped believing my promises because I'd broken every single one. From landlords, employers, the guy at the pawn shop who knew I was selling stolen stuff. From God. And from myself — which, it turns out, was the one I couldn't crack for the longest time.
People talk about forgiveness like it's flipping a switch. "Just forgive and move on." Cool. Have you ever tried to forgive someone who introduced you to the substance that almost killed you? Have you ever tried to forgive yourself after you stole your mom's anniversary ring to pawn for drug money? It's not a switch. It's more like pulling a knife out slowly — it hurts coming out almost as much as it hurt going in.
Two Directions, Both Painful
In recovery, forgiveness runs two directions and neither one is fun.
There's forgiving other people. I carried a lot of anger at the friend — I use that term loosely — who first handed me a pill at a party when I was twenty-two. "It'll help with your back," he said. I held onto that resentment for years, like if I hated him hard enough it would undo what happened. My sponsor Ray had this saying: "Resentment is you drinking poison and waiting for the other guy to die." I'd heard it a hundred times before I actually felt it.
Then there's forgiving yourself. Nobody warns you about this part. When the fog finally lifts and you can see clearly — like really, brutally, high-definition clearly — the full picture of what you did... it's almost worse than being high. Because at least when I was using, I could blur the edges. Sober, you see all of it. The lies. The faces. The specific moments when you chose the substance over people who loved you and you knew exactly what you were doing.
I remember sitting in my apartment about four months sober, and a memory hit me out of nowhere. Thanksgiving two years earlier. My mom had cooked for two days. I showed up high, picked a fight with my brother-in-law, knocked over a glass of wine on her tablecloth, and left before dessert to go meet my dealer. I could see her face — not angry, just tired. This woman who'd been praying for me every single day, and I couldn't even make it through one dinner.
That memory kept me up until about 3 AM. I sat on my kitchen floor and cried in a way I hadn't since I was a kid. Ugly crying. The kind where your whole body shakes.
What It Cost My Mom
Making amends is Step 9 in recovery, and it's the one most people dread. I dreaded it with my mom more than anyone.
I sat across from her at a Cracker Barrel — her choice, she loves that place — and I started listing things. The lies. The money I'd stolen, which I'd added up and it was over four thousand dollars. The nights she sat up not knowing if I was alive. The Christmas I missed entirely because I was on a three-day binge. The ring.
I couldn't look at her when I talked about the ring.
She let me finish. Didn't interrupt once. Then she reached across the table and grabbed my hand and said, "Baby, I forgave you a long time ago. I've just been waiting for you to come back."
I lost it. Right there in Cracker Barrel, surrounded by old people eating biscuits, I just fell apart. Because she'd already absorbed the cost. While I was still out there destroying everything, she was on her knees forgiving me. She'd been carrying that weight for years — the weight of choosing to love someone who kept hurting her — and she carried it willingly.
That's what forgiveness costs the person doing the forgiving. It costs them more than it costs the person being forgiven. Every time.
The Hardest Person to Forgive
Forgiving other people was hard. Forgiving myself almost broke me.
Because I knew the full truth. Other people got the edited version — "I struggled with substance abuse." But I knew the actual story. Every lie I crafted. Every manipulation. The time I told my girlfriend I was going to a job interview when I was really going to score. The look on my nephew's face when I missed his birthday party for the third year in a row.
My counselor Janet told me something I argued with for weeks: "If God has forgiven you, who are you to refuse it?" I hated that. It made me mad. Because holding onto the guilt felt like the right thing to do — like, at least if I hated myself for it, that proved I wasn't a total monster. But Janet said something else that I'm still chewing on: "That's not humility. That's pride wearing a mask. You're saying your judgment matters more than God's."
Ouch.
Self-forgiveness isn't saying what you did was fine. It's saying what you did was real, the consequences were real, and God's grace is bigger than all of it. If He says the debt is paid, who am I to keep making payments?
I'm still working on this, honestly. Some days I believe it all the way down. Other days I'm back on that kitchen floor at 3 AM, replaying Thanksgiving. But the floor visits are getting less frequent. That's something.
The Cross-Shaped Math
Here's where it gets uncomfortable. The cross isn't just a symbol. It's what forgiveness actually looks like when you carry it all the way to the end. Jesus absorbed a cost He didn't owe, for people who didn't deserve it, before they even asked. That's the math of grace, and it doesn't make sense on paper.
I don't understand it fully. I'm not sure I'm supposed to. But I know that every grudge I carry looks pretty small next to a cross. And every time I refuse to forgive myself, I'm basically saying what Jesus did wasn't enough. And I don't want to say that. Even on the bad days, I don't want to say that.
What You Get Back
The thing nobody tells you about forgiveness is what it gives you in return. Not immediately — it's not a vending machine — but over time. You get your head back. The mental bandwidth that resentment was hogging up gets freed. The constant replay of old offenses starts to fade. You stop rehearsing conversations with people who wronged you at 2 AM.
My buddy Marcus — six years sober, works at a tire shop, one of the most peaceful people I know — told me once: "I spent five years in a prison that the other person didn't even know existed. The day I forgave my dad was the day I walked out." His dad never apologized. Never acknowledged what he did. Marcus forgave him anyway. Not for his dad's sake. For his own.
I'm not all the way there yet. I've forgiven my mom (she was the easy one — she barely needed forgiving, I was the problem). I've mostly forgiven the people who enabled me, though some days that slips. I've made progress on forgiving myself, but that one's like peeling an onion. Just when you think you've gotten to the center, there's another layer.
But the weight is lighter than it used to be. And most days, that's enough.