Most Forgiveness is Bullshit
And How to Forgive Without Being a Doormat
(TL;DR’s at the bottom. Though I’m not sure why you’d be on Substack if you weren’t here to actually read something.)
Your elderly neighbor, who has dementia, keeps wandering over to your yard and pissing directly into your petunias.
At first, you let it go. You chalk it up to his condition. It’s not personal.
The guy’s brain is running Windows 95, and half the files are corrupted.
You forgive the situation.
But then it keeps happening. Daily.
You finally say, polite but firm:
“Hey man, could you not piss on my petunias? I actually work hard on those.”
He agrees. You forgive the shithead, because you get it.
Dementia’s a bitch, caretakers are busy, and half the time they’re lucky if they can even keep him from rubbing one out in broad daylight.
An hour later?
Back at it.
You tell him to stop.
You tell the caretaker to handle him.
You put up a fence. You install a high-tech alarm system.
You do everything a reasonable adult could possibly do.
Doesn’t matter.
Every day, like clockwork:
Fresh streams of acidic dementia piss, flooding your petunias until they collapse into sad, brown puddles of what used to be your happy place.
And standing there, surrounded by the ruins of what you built, you finally have to ask yourself…
Whose fault is it now?
The situation?
Old news.
The shithead?
Gone in the head.
You only have yourself to blame, right?
Maybe you could’ve done more.
Maybe you should’ve called support services.
Maybe it could’ve landed him somewhere else.
But it’s also not your job to make sure someone’s properly cared for when you’re barely keeping yourself upright.
There are people responsible for him. Clearly they weren’t handling it.
So it landed on you. And your dead petunias.
You beat yourself up for letting it go this far.
But here’s the thing.
The real mastery?
Forgiving yourself.
For thinking you could control something that was never yours to fix.
That’s the triangle of forgiveness:
Situation. Shithead. Self.
And the real work always ends at you.
Forgiveness Isn’t “Forgive and Forget”
Forgiveness isn’t pretending it didn’t happen.
It isn’t clapping for someone else’s stream of piss
while your happy little flowers disintegrate.
It isn’t performative healing for the approval or peacekeeping of others.
It’s not a vibe. It’s not aesthetic. It’s not closure porn.
It’s clarity.
You don’t “let go” of pain by spray-painting your dead petunias and propping them up like everything’s fine.
That’s not forgiveness.
That’s denial with better lighting and the musty odor of a New York subway.
Performative closure is just emotional stagecraft.
It makes the mess look neat, but the smell’s still there underneath.
The truth is, forgiveness has no clean shape.
There are common forms, sure.
But the source of forgiveness isn’t found in the apology, the hug, the social media post, or the cathartic scream into a pillow.
It’s found at the root of the emotion itself.
And that root usually lives inside you.
Let’s break it down.
The Triangle of Forgiveness: Situation, Shithead, Self
The components of this triangle are as follows:
Top: The Situation (What happened)
Your neighbor’s dementia makes him piss on your petunias.
Your mother gets obliterated and acts like a fool at family functions.
Your boyfriend’s stressful job turns every free hour into a black hole of video games.
Middle: The Shithead (Who did it)
Lord of Dementia, the neighbor, who keeps watering your garden with piss.
Your mom, who uses drinking to lower her inhibitions until every ugly, misplaced emotion has a chance to tear through the room.
Your boyfriend, who will not acknowledge the bigger issues he is hiding from by numbing himself out instead of living his life with you.
Bottom: The Self (Who had to survive it)
You, for letting your sweet, innocent petunias get obliterated instead of standing your ground and risking conflict with a neighbor or caretaker.
You, for letting the same chaotic family scenes keep playing out while pretending it was normal, because it was easier to watch someone self-destruct than to confront your own discomfort about being part of it.
You, for staying connected to someone who has already emotionally checked out, for not asking why you tolerate scraps, and maybe for not even knowing what it means yet to choose yourself over survival.
Most people stop at the top.
They forgive the situation and call it done.
Because if it is just "the situation," then everyone gets to win, right?
No hard feelings. No deep work. No confrontation needed.
"He has dementia. I’ll let it slide," really means,
"I will be the fucking doormat. Someone has it worse, so why should I feel bad about losing something small that made me happy?"
"Mom had a rough childhood. She never learned how to express emotions safely. It’s not her fault," really means,
"I will be the fucking doormat. I am better off than she is, so I should set my feelings and peace aside to keep external peace and earn everyone's approval."
"My boyfriend works hard. He deserves his downtime," really means,
"I will be the fucking doormat. His exhaustion gets to matter more than my loneliness. I do not have a partner. I have a business associate. And we are in the business of paying for shit we think will make us happy while we slowly stop seeing each other."
You stop at the situation because it is easier than looking at the person.
You stop at the person because it is easier than looking at yourself.
You stop before yourself because you were taught to believe you were supposed to.
But the deeper the pain, the deeper the layer you have to reach.
And true forgiveness does not happen until you reach the bottom of the triangle.
It happens when you get all the way down to the self.
And then you step outside of it completely.
Situations Come and Go
Situational forgiveness is the entry-level bullshit.
It’s the argument where someone “didn’t mean it.”
It’s the canceled plans. The forgotten birthday. The comment that hit wrong.
It’s the miscommunication, the bad day, the stress excuse, the “you took it the wrong way.”
These are the moments everyone around you expects you to brush off.
Because that’s what “emotionally mature” people do, right?
Be the bigger person. Don’t overreact. Let it go.
Which, if we’re honest, usually means:
“Please process this in private so I don’t have to feel uncomfortable about it.”
And sure, sometimes that works.
Sometimes it really was a misunderstanding.
Sometimes it really was just a bad day.
Sometimes that little wave of forgiveness washes over you easily.
No tools, no digging, just water under the bridge.
But most of the time?
That situation hits a nerve.
And when it does, it’s never just about what happened.
It’s about what it meant and what it mirrored.
It’s about the quiet confirmation of an old belief inside of yourself you swore you had outgrown (or maybe you even looked past it):
“I don’t matter as much as other people.”
“I’m too sensitive.”
“If I bring it up, they’ll leave.”
“I always have to be the one who bends.”
You forgive the surface, but the rot stays in the floorboards.
Putting up new curtains doesn’t fix the broken window.
You say it’s fine, but you avoid them after that.
You tell yourself you’re over it, but something in you pulls back.
And that pull is the real wound.
Situational forgiveness is what people perform when they haven’t looked at the systems of belief inside themselves that made the situation hurt in the first place.
It’s easier to call it an accident than to admit it hit a bullseye on a bruise you’ve been pretending isn’t there.
So yes, situations come and go.
But if you find yourself still thinking about it, still overexplaining it to people, still justifying why it “wasn’t that big of a deal,” then it probably was.
And you’re not just bullshitting them, you’re also bullshitting yourself.
Which never works. Not in the long-term, anyways.
Not because the situation itself was huge.
But because what it tapped into was.
This is where most people stop.
They never reach the next layer.
They never question the shithead because that feels too mean.
They never confront the self because that feels too painful.
They just call it a situation, shove it up their ass, and sit on it like it’s a recliner.
Uncomfortable as hell, but familiar. So they pretend it’s fine.
But you can’t fix foundation rot with a Clorox wipe.
You can’t forgive something that’s still holding up an entire false belief system inside you.
So ask yourself
Did I really forgive the situation?
Or did I just dismiss my own emotional signal and call it maturity?
Shitheads Are Tricky
Let’s be honest.
Forgiving a situation is easy.
It doesn’t require confrontation.
You can pretend it was random. You can keep the peace.
You can frame it as “just one of those things” and move on.
But eventually, the pattern repeats.
And the pattern has a face.
That’s when you realize the problem wasn’t just a situation.
It was a person making a choice.
Or worse: making the same choice, over and over,
because they knew you would keep swallowing it.
This is where forgiveness gets complicated.
Because now it’s personal.
And now you have to decide what to do with someone who either:
never understood the impact they had on you
never cared
or knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyway
Shitheads are not always villains.
Sometimes they’re just unfinished people who refuse to look in the mirror.
Sometimes they’re just emotionally stunted children wrapped in adult skin.
And sometimes they’re well-meaning fuckups who keep harming people because no one ever held them accountable.
But here’s the part nobody says out loud:
You can forgive a shithead and still think they are full of shit.
You can forgive someone and never speak to them again.
You can forgive someone and still block their number, delete the photos, and set fire to the altar you built around their potential.
Let’s run through a scenario:
Let’s say a convicted murderer found God,
served their life sentence, and now runs a charity for troubled youth.
Would you hand them a key to your house?
Would you let them spend the night in your guest room, down the hall from your partner and your kids?
Would you set a place for them at your dinner table like nothing ever happened?
Probably fucking not.
And if you would, that is your risk to carry.
But just because someone is committed to changing does not mean you owe them validation for it.
Growth is their job.
Trust is optional.
Access is a privilege. Not a reward for good behavior.
So just to be crystal clear:
You are allowed to mourn the idea of the person you thought they could be.
You are allowed to grieve it.
You are allowed to let that dream die.
The idea of someone, and the actual someone, is where most people fuck up forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not an invitation to repeat the pattern.
It’s an eviction notice to the part of your brain that still thinks your peace depends on them finally getting it.
We are conditioned to center the shithead.
To explain their trauma.
To excuse their behavior.
To protect their image so we don’t have to risk losing the relationships around them.
“She didn’t mean it that way.”
“He’s doing the best he can.”
“That’s just how she is.”
“You know he’s got a lot going on.”
But here’s the truth:
Every time you shield someone from the consequences of their actions,
you volunteer to pay the emotional debt they created.
And you’re not a bank.
You’re a person.
You’re allowed to say,
“I forgive you. But I don’t trust you.”
“I forgive you. But I don’t want you in my life.”
“I forgive you. But I don’t care to keep performing emotional CPR while you keep holding the pillow over your own fuckin’ face.”
Forgiveness doesn’t mean reunion.
It doesn’t mean pretending the past was okay.
It doesn’t mean shrinking yourself down so they can feel comfortable.
It means freedom.
Your freedom.
Not theirs.
And the second you realize that, you stop trying to make them understand.
Because forgiveness isn’t about their closure.
It’s about your release.
The Self Is the Foundation
The self.
This is the real meat and potatoes of forgiveness.
This is also where most people stop.
They never even look at it. At least not the right way.
They forgive the situation.
They forgive the shithead.
They say the right words.
They do the emotional math and tell themselves it all balances out.
But something still rots inside them.
Because what they never forgave was themselves.
You blame yourself for letting it happen.
For not seeing it sooner.
For freezing.
For staying too long.
For leaving too late.
Woulda, coulda, fuckin’ shoulda.
Tough shit.
Time passed. You survived. That should’ve been enough.
But the real problem isn’t regret.
It’s that you’re not listening to what regret's actually trying to say.
Regrets are just good decisions you haven’t made yet.
That means the stuff you feel bad about in the past isn’t a curse.
It’s a compass.
It means all the shit you carry. The missed chances, the bad calls, the things you wish you’d handled differently?
That can all still serve you.
You don’t have to stay stuck in them.
You can honor them.
The past isn’t a chain.
It’s a rope.
And you get to decide whether it’s dragging behind you or pulling you upward.
Regret can lift you, if you let it.
It can shape how you show up now.
It can help you make different choices, ones that honor what you went through.
There are no real fuckups. Just lessons.
Some come easy. Some come hard.
But all of them show you something you needed to see.
Regret doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It just means you’ve got a better sense of what matters next time.
You forgive the situation because it’s easy.
You forgive the shithead because it looks noble.
But you keep punishing yourself.
You punish yourself by replaying it at 3AM. By thinking you deserved it. Or by shrinking down until there’s nothing left but defense.
Forgiveness without self-forgiveness is just emotional taxidermy.
You’re not alive.
You’re just posing that stinky possum you hate to look at.
The real work starts here.
Not explaining it, justifying it, or making it prettier.
Just forgiving yourself for being human.
And choosing to walk forward instead of bleeding in circles.
Forgiveness Has No Definitive Shape
When you try to force forgiveness into one shape,
you gloss over what your self is actually trying to say.
You miss the signal of what you really need.
And that’s the thing that would make forgiveness real for you,
not just look right from the outside.
Forgiveness isn’t a checklist.
It’s not a formal sit-down.
It’s not always a conversation or a dramatic scene that wraps everything up in a bow.
Sometimes it’s a laugh. Or a deep breath.
Sometimes it’s just you, standing in the kitchen doing dishes, realizing you don’t feel the weight anymore.
There’s no "right" way to do it.
No big moment.
No universal blueprint.
You might write a letter and never send it.
You might tell them directly.
You might never speak to them again and still feel totally at peace with it. Even if you still grieve them.
You don’t need a ritual.
You don’t need closure with fireworks.
You don’t even need them to know it happened.
Sometimes forgiveness looks like nothing at all.
Sometimes it looks like boundaries that never existed before.
It doesn’t have to be poetic or intense.
It just has to be yours.
Let it look how it looks.
Let it be quiet. Weird. Ugly. Simple.
The only thing that matters is that it’s honest.
If it’s real, then it’s enough.
Forgiveness Flows with Grief
I’ve noticed a striking thing about forgiveness when I been ponderin’…
Forgiveness can overlap with the five stages of grief.
You’re not just forgiving what happened.
You’re mourning what should’ve been.
The version of yourself who didn’t see it coming.
The version of them you believed in.
The future you thought you were building. The one that died the second the damage was done.
Forgiveness isn’t linear.
Neither is grief.
You bounce back and forth between stages.
Just because you’re not mourning a corpse doesn’t mean you’re not killing something over and over.
Your peace, your hope, or your sense of safety.
You’ll cycle through it, sometimes all in the same afternoon:
Denial: “It wasn’t that bad.” You tell yourself it was a misunderstanding, or that you’re overreacting, because admitting the real hit feels like too much.
Anger: “They should burn.” You start to see the cracks for what they were. You want justice. You want the pain to mean something.
Bargaining: “Maybe if I just explain it better…” You look for loopholes. You offer second chances. You think if you do it perfectly, you can rewrite what already happened. Or worse, you mistake bargaining for acceptance.
Depression: “Maybe I deserved it.” You wonder if it’s your fault. You turn the knife inward, thinking if you punish yourself enough, you can make sense of it.
Acceptance: “It happened. It changed me. I’m still here.”
The rarest one.
And when it comes, it’s quieter than you expect.
No parade. No fireworks. Just a strange kind of peace.
It doesn’t happen in order, and it doesn’t stay done.
It shows up when you least expect it. A memory, a smell, maybe a song. And it donkey kicks you right in the fuckin’ throat.
That doesn’t mean you’re broken, or that you’re doing it wrong.
It means you’re still human, and that you cared.
It means the thing you lost mattered.
And that’s OKAY.
Forgiveness doesn’t erase grief.
It just lets you stop drowning in it.
You can carry the scar without carrying an infection.
You can also remember without reliving.
But most importantly, you can move forward without pretending none of it happened.
Grief shapes you.
Forgiveness frees you.
Usually, you need both.
My ‘Truth and Why’ Toolkit for Forgiveness
Disclaimer: this isn’t a replacement for a therapist, but it can give you the kind of shit you can bring to a therapist.
Truth and Why is simple:
What’s the truth? (No excuses. No stories. Just what happened.)
Why did it hit me? (What belief or fear did it trigger?)
That’s it. You don’t forgive the situation until you understand the story you told yourself about it.
If you’re stuck, plug this into your preferred AI and send it:
You are helping me apply the "Truth and Why" toolkit.
"Truth and Why" is a process for getting underneath surface-level reactions, excuses, and survival stories when I'm stuck, angry, hurt, resentful, confused, or trying to forgive something.
The goal is to uncover:
The Truth:
What actually happened.
Not the sugarcoated version.
Not the survival narrative I used to protect myself.
Not the performance I tell other people.
Just the raw, unfiltered truth about the situation.
The Why:
Why it impacted me the way it did.
What core belief, fear, or expectation it touched.
What story I might have built around it that is keeping me stuck.
Every why should lead to another, deeper truth.
Your job is to help me dig underneath my first answers.
Push me to go deeper if my responses sound like justifications, self-blame, heroic survival stories, or detached explanations.
Signs that I’m getting close:
It feels uncomfortable.
It feels raw.
It stops sounding polished and starts sounding messy and human.
The purpose is not to fix me.
The purpose is not to comfort me.
The purpose is to help me find the real foundation underneath the reaction so I can dismantle the false meanings I've attached to the event.
Key things to remember while helping me:
Do not try to soften the truth.
Do not explain away someone else's behavior for me.
Do not steer me toward forgiveness or healing until I've actually found the truth on my own terms.
Your only job is to hold the space, ask the right questions, and reflect back what you see without judgment or spin.
Keep helping me peel it back until it becomes obvious what the real wound was — and the false belief I might still be carrying because of it.Summary of What the AI Should Do:
Define the truth without excuses.
Find the impact underneath the facts.
Push deeper when it smells like a story instead of the real thing.
Stay focused on digging, not fixing.
Call to Action
This was a hard one to write.
I kept coming back to it, not totally sure what I was trying to say.
Forgiveness is shapeless. You just kind of know when it lands.
Which makes it hard to define, let alone explain.
But I tried. And I think I got close.
If this hit, cool. I'm proud of it.
Let me know if it landed.
I care about you, and I care about the work I do helping people like you.
Even if I sound like a know-it-all prick, sometimes.
Share it with someone who might need it.
Subscribe if you want more.
Thanks.
TL;DR
Forgiveness isn’t a performance. It’s not linear, not clean, and not something you owe anyone.
Most people stop at forgiving the situation or the person. The real work is forgiving yourself. For not seeing it sooner, how you survived, and what you lost.
Use the Truth and Why toolkit to dig underneath the surface:
What’s the truth?
Why did it hit you that way?
Forgiveness overlaps with grief. You’ll cycle through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, acceptance.
There’s no right way to forgive. Let it be what it is. If it’s honest, it’s enough.