The Day I Learned to Forgive Myself

The Day I Learned to Forgive Myself

By: Abdullah

I used to believe forgiveness was something you gave to others. Someone wrongs you, they apologize, and you decide sometimes reluctantly whether to let go of the pain. What I didn’t realize was that sometimes the hardest forgiveness to offer is the one you owe yourself.

My story begins with a mistake. Not a catastrophic one by the world’s standards no broken laws, no ruined careers, no scandal splashed across headlines. It was simply a mistake of the heart, the kind we make in moments of fear, weakness, or confusion. But to me, it felt enormous.

I hurt someone I loved because I couldn’t face my own truth. I said words I didn’t mean, shut the door on a friendship that mattered deeply, and walked away as though pride could patch the hole guilt left behind. At the time, I convinced myself I was doing the right thing. But late at night, the silence reminded me otherwise.

For weeks, I carried the weight of it. It showed up in unexpected places the way I avoided old songs we both loved, the way I hesitated when mutual friends asked about them, the way my chest tightened when I passed familiar streets. Regret has a way of staining the smallest corners of your life until everything looks like a reminder.

At first, I thought I could outrun it. I buried myself in work, filled my calendar with endless tasks, and scrolled mindlessly on my phone when the quiet became unbearable. But regret doesn’t disappear when ignored it grows louder. And soon, I realized I wasn’t just avoiding one mistake; I was avoiding myself.

The turning point came on an ordinary afternoon. I was cleaning out an old drawer when I found a letter I had written to myself years earlier. It was from a younger, more hopeful version of me who believed in second chances, who believed in resilience. The letter ended with one line that stopped me cold:

"Be kind to yourself you’re the only person you spend every day with."

I sat on the floor with that piece of paper in my hand and finally let the tears fall. For the first time, I wasn’t crying for the person I hurt. I was crying for the person I had become someone so tangled in self-blame that I had forgotten kindness could be directed inward.

That night, I decided to try something different. I wrote a new letter, but this time it wasn’t from my past self it was to my present self. I wrote down the mistake. I admitted it. I didn’t dress it up or try to justify it. And then, beneath the heavy truth, I wrote something that felt impossible:

"I forgive you."

The words looked awkward at first, like they didn’t belong to me. But the more I stared at them, the more I felt a subtle shift inside me. Forgiveness didn’t erase what happened. It didn’t magically fix the friendship I had lost. But it gave me permission to stop living as if I deserved permanent punishment for being human.

Self-forgiveness is not a single moment it’s a practice. I had to repeat those words to myself countless times. I had to remind myself that making mistakes is not the same as being a mistake. Slowly, the guilt loosened its grip. Slowly, I learned to see the full picture: yes, I hurt someone, but I also cared, I also tried, and I also grew from it.

Over time, I realized something profound: forgiving myself didn’t mean forgetting what I had done. It meant remembering differently. Instead of a wound that bled every time I thought of it, the memory became a scar a sign that I had healed, that I had survived, and that I had chosen compassion over shame.

Looking back, I wish I could say I handled everything perfectly, that I reached out and mended what was broken. But life doesn’t always give us tidy endings. Sometimes the people we hurt move on. Sometimes the closure we crave never arrives. And sometimes the only redemption available is the one we find within ourselves.

That’s what forgiveness gave me: not erasure, but peace. Not denial, but acceptance.

I often think about that younger version of myself the one who wrote that first letter urging me to be kind. She was right. We do spend every day with ourselves. And if we can’t find forgiveness within that constant companionship, we end up living in a prison of our own making.

The day I learned to forgive myself, I finally set myself free. Abdullah