How I Learned to Forgive Someone Who Never Apologized

How I Learned to Forgive Someone Who Never Apologized

By Hasnain Shah

Forgiveness is a strange thing. It arrives slowly, then all at once—like the smell of rain before the storm breaks, or the quiet settling after a long, angry argument. I used to think that forgiveness required two people: the one who hurt and the one who was hurt. I thought the door stayed locked unless both hands turned the key.

But I learned—eventually—that sometimes the only key is the one you carve for yourself.

For years, I carried the weight of someone else’s actions the way you carry a heavy backpack long after your muscles have stopped complaining. You grow used to the ache. You forget that you’re carrying it. You only notice it when you try to run or breathe or dream and suddenly something pulls you back, whispering, No, not yet.

The person who hurt me was someone I once trusted with a childlike faith. Someone whose approval I chased the way kids run after kites—certain that if I held on tight enough, I could make something beautiful fly. Instead, I ended up with a tangled string and a sky full of unkept promises.

There was never a dramatic betrayal. No shouting match, no slammed doors. The harm came quietly, almost elegantly—through silence, disappointment, and the slow erasure of the parts of me they found inconvenient. Every time I shared something vulnerable, it was met with a shrug. Every time I needed support, I was told not to be “so dramatic.” When I succeeded, they minimized it. When I failed, they magnified it.

It took me years to name it: emotional neglect wrapped in a smile.

The funny thing about being hurt without obvious wounds is that you spend a long time convincing yourself you’re imagining it. It’s easier to believe you’re too sensitive than to admit someone you love simply didn’t show up for you.

I waited for an apology I knew would never come. I rehearsed imaginary conversations in my head, the kind where I finally got to say everything I had swallowed over the years. In those fantasies, they always apologized. They always said, “I didn’t realize what I did.” They always promised to change.

But real life is quieter. And far less cinematic.

They went on with their life, unbothered. And I stayed in mine, stuck.

The turning point wasn’t some profound moment—it was a mundane Tuesday afternoon. I was cleaning out a drawer I had avoided for months, the kind filled with random scraps of old life: ticket stubs, expired IDs, letters I never sent. At the bottom was a photo of the two of us, smiling like the world had never been anything but kind. Looking at that picture felt like seeing a younger version of myself and wanting to reach through the glossy surface to warn them.

Instead, I sat down on the floor and cried. Not angry tears—just tired ones. Tired of carrying the weight. Tired of wishing for something I would never receive.

Tired of holding myself hostage to someone else’s growth.

That’s when I realized forgiveness wasn’t about letting them off the hook. It was about letting myself go.

I thought about the life I wanted—the way I wanted to move through the world. I didn’t want bitterness to be my compass. I didn’t want resentment shaping my decisions like some unseen puppeteer. I didn’t want to keep replaying their absence like an old movie on loop.

Forgiveness, I realized, is not a gift to the person who hurt you.

It’s a gift you give to the part of yourself that’s still bleeding.

So I started small. I wrote a letter I never intended to send. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t poetic. It was raw and unfiltered, full of truths I had never spoken aloud. I let myself be angry. I let myself mourn. I let myself grieve the version of the relationship I thought we could have had.

When I finished, something inside me unclenched.

Over the next few months, I practiced letting go. Not all at once—just in bits. Whenever the bitterness returned, I met it with compassion instead of shame. Of course you’re hurt, I’d tell myself. But you don’t have to stay there.

Forgiveness became a quiet ritual:

Breathing.

Releasing.

Choosing softness without surrendering my boundaries.

And slowly, the weight lifted. Not completely—old wounds have a way of leaving faint echoes—but enough that I could walk without dragging the past behind me.

I never got the apology I thought I needed. Maybe they don’t believe they did anything wrong. Maybe they would deny it. Maybe they’ve rewritten history in their favor. Maybe they simply don’t think about it at all.

But forgiving them didn’t require their understanding. It required mine.

I forgave them because I wanted peace more than I wanted validation.

I forgave them because I wanted to grow more than I wanted revenge.

I forgave them because carrying their mistakes was never my job.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean inviting someone back into your life. It doesn’t mean pretending the hurt was small.

It means remembering without reopening the wound.

It means accepting without needing closure.

It means choosing freedom over fury.

And that, I’ve learned, is enough.

Because sometimes the apology that changes your life is the one you give yourself.