Love Yourself Enough to Forgive Someone Else

I seem to be the only person I know who is not carrying emotional pain around. So many people I know have been traumatized by bullying. I never was. I was however, traumatized by a stalking and that’s pretty similar. But even that, I recovered from. And no, I’m not carrying around that pain or harboring ill feelings towards my stalker. Am I just a resilient person? Possibly. But I think the real reason I don’t carry around old pain with me is because I choose to feel compassion for the people who caused me pain in the past. And because I feel sorrow for them and the pain they are or were in, I no longer feel the anger that fed my pain. When you don’t feed your pain, it goes away. All that remains is a sadness that there are people in this world so consumed by their own pain, they can’t help but hurt others. And while I don’t like feeling sad, it’s way better than holding onto pain.