Who was the hardest person in your life to forgive? How did you do it?

Oh wow, this is going to be difficult. I'd have to say, my former brother-in-law.

He tried to kill my family and was put away for it for a little while. For roughly 8 years straight, day in and day out, every waking minute of my life I hated this man. I would see him from time to time after he was released and I would look at him with confusion. Trying to figure out the who, what, when, where, how of everything that this person did to not only me but my family as a whole.

A person who married my sister told her he loved her and then proceeded to try to kill her mother and brother and her while he went off to go live his life. Set my mothers apartment on fire and watched the fire start to become a raging inferno that destroyed a majority of that building like it was some game.

And my sister stayed with him throughout that. Divorced him recently. I could've had this man killed, I could have done so many things to this person but I couldn't let that anger dictate my life from here on out. So I let that anger go. And it was the most difficult thing that I've ever had to do in my entire life.

Because of that incident, I suffer from PTSD now, my relationships with people have been ruined because I cannot trust anyone anymore, and my dream of becoming a detective died. I went from being this happy and fun 18-year-old guy who was ready to take the world by storm and even thought of joining the military to a 26-year-old zombie on medications that don't allow me to have control over my own life.

Part of me wishes that he killed me so that my life wouldn't be the way that it is now but life wasn't meant to be fucking easy.

/r/AskReddit Thread