SaysMe – I wish I could offer you an ear to work some of this stuff out. I know how hard it is to be caught in the quicksand of hurting too much to forgive. I really am learning, though, that sometimes you can remove yourself and look at it from the outside and you find that the things they did that were soooo obviously wrong may have not been as obvious as we thought, or there may have been an assumption we made that made it obvious but our assumption was wrong. And when we can let ourselves see that perhaps there is a tiny chance that they weren’t so blatantly nasty, we are open to knowing that maybe they aren’t quite as guilty and MAYBE we can think about letting Hashem deal with them.
If we know that the hurt was our lesson, and Hashem will decide if they were right or wrong in being the shaliach and will punish them accordingly, then we don’t have to bear the burden of thinking it is our job and our right to bring them to their knees. Why do we need to pay them back? Are we in it for our dignity? We can search elsewhere for dignity. Is it that we feel we deserve better? Maybe at that minute we didn’t. Are we just too hurt to forgive? Then ell yourself that you need to be cautious of this person, you need to protect yourself from further harm, but that if they were healthy and well and KNEW they were hurting you, they probably wouldn’t have.
Sorry for the generic chizuk, I hope it gives you some nechama.
NOMTW – So glad you are knee deep in school, I wish I was! Hatzlacha in all your courses and it was great to hear from you.
Not a sheep – Love it!!
Gmar Tov everyone, may Moshiach come and rescue us all from our selves and rescue our neshomos from all these nisyonos looming so close to us.