Forgive me.
I’m watching Wentworth for the first time, halfway through the last season, and I keep thinking about how often I see the same old character arc in books and movies and shows, where the villain experiences some kind of drastic redemption, forcing the protagonist to a crossroads where they have to reconcile their own sense of morality with how they were harmed. It’s always written so that we’re supposed to side with the villain as soon as the protagonist starts questioning the truth of their redemption. It doesn’t matter what the villain did. If the protagonist doesn’t forgive the villain (after, like, two episodes of change) they are the one we are supposed to consider morally in the wrong.
Years ago, when Nataly and I first moved to Vermont, I called Chase Education Finance and told them I was struggling. I had been paying on time for seven years, without ever having asked for forbearance, so I imagined that it would be easy for them to grant me forbearance now, so I could get back on my feet.
But my history didn’t matter. After a whole lot of back and forth, they finally granted me two months of some kind of economic hardship deferment, but only after I set up automatic payments for when the deferment ended, and only after I promised to pay my loan instead of rent if I was still struggling.
The real kicker is I didn’t even take out a loan with Chase Education Finance. My parents did. My father tricked me into signing the disbursement check by making me think it was a gift from my grandfather. Then, after we cashed it at a suspicious looking Western Union somewhere near Malden, MA, he looked me in the eye, his hands on the giant envelope full of cash, and promised, with a wink, to pay off the federal loans I did know about.
Which, of course, he didn’t. That was never part of the plan.
Sometimes, people ask me how I could have ever trusted my father in the first place, in this way that always makes me feel really stupid. He had always been the villain of my story. A grifter. An A-class con-artist with torn shoes and broken glasses. He knew how to prey on people’s empathy, how to make it look like he was trying so hard to steer his ship in the right direction, using nothing but a broken moral compass and his own determination. If only someone would take pity on him, just this once, if only someone, anyone, would help him, goddammit, he could get back on his feet and finally claim his redemption arc, could suddenly turn into the fine, upstanding, moral citizen he so desperately “wanted” to be.
So when he asked for my forgiveness a few months before I left for college, after, like, two weeks of transformation, I gave it to him, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? That’s what everyone and everything around me told me to do.
Don’t hold on to anger. Forgiveness is the only way to heal.
The people who have been reading my blog so far already know that this fall into winter was an absolute shit show for me. My mother died. I had surgery. I fell into a deep financial hole where I couldn’t pay my bills because I literally didn’t have the money to pay them. And despite years of punctual payment history and a credit score to be proud of (especially after being the victim of my parents’ six figure student loan identity theft scam), my credit score immediately plummeted, my history of on time payments suddenly tarnished. That mystical Credit Score Being in the Sky, who judges our value as citizens based on our ability to maintain impeccable financial luck, has now deemed me unworthy, and if I want to get on the capitalist God’s good side again, I will have to wait years for those late payments to come off my credit score, and I have to do a perfect job of showing already rich corporations that I do, in fact, care about making them richer.
And because we live in a “Well I didn’t receive grace, therefore, no one else should,” kind of society, the likelihood of my student loans ever being forgiven is pretty slim, as is the likelihood that already rich corporations will ever grant me, or anyone else, the kind of grace victims of abuse are expected to grant their abusers. Because we also live in a society that doesn’t approve of uncomfortable emotions and truth, and we want the bad things that happen to people to get wrapped up in neat little packages, decorated with big froofy bows and heartwarming tales of love.
We’re so squeamish to acknowledge atrocities, both personal and societal, expecting victims of oppression to move on without accountability, brandishing stories of forgiveness like a magic wand capable of healing all things.
Don’t hold on to anger. Forgiveness is the only way to heal. Also we shouldn’t have to pay reparations, or forgive student debt, and we should annhilate Palestinians because Hamas, and also, don’t fuck up your credit score or miss a payment to a corporation, like, ever, because that obviously means you don’t deserve anything.
After my mother died, someone asked me how my father was doing, and I shrugged. I haven’t spoken to him in sixteen years. “Wow, you won’t even talk to him after a death?” this person asked, like there was something wrong with me. Like my mother’s death was some kind of magic portal into a world where neither of my parents had ever used my forgiving nature against me for personal gain. Like it was my moral compass that was broken because I didn’t see death as a reason to let go. I estranged myself from my family because it was the only way to protect myself, because my nature is a forgiving one, and they used that to take advantage of me over and over again. I hold onto my anger because it protects me from leaving the past in the past, allowing me to see my worth in the present against the backdrop of the way I used to be treated. I don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone. I don’t want pain to cause more pain.
But I think our moral compass is broken, and outdated, because the more we keep leaving the past in the past, the further we keep going in the wrong direction.