Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.

From a posting on Facebook that struck a nerve

It seems so simple, and makes such obvious sense, but unfortunately there are no instructions on how exactly one would go about forgiving oneself.

Starting my search for answers in earnest. I made a mental foray back to my high school years, in an effort to understand that time of my life, so critical to the formation of who I am today and source of so much current angst. It seems that time was one unpleasant memory after another, even fifty years later I’d be hard pressed to come up with a happy one. The result of which has been that I’ve kept the memories of that entire time walled off in a dark corner of my mind.

I suppose the changes I’ve felt lately have had something to do with my growing older, having less to look forward to, leaving much more time available for reflection, if that is in fact what it is. The therapist I unload all these feelings on might also have something to do with it.

It still amazes me, the sheer weight of pain, disappointment and regret that I have managed to drag along with me for fifty years. I know this is a product of never having dealt with any of it at the time. Even now I can see each moment of humiliation, feel each burning act of bullying, taste the sting of failure all seen through those seventeen-year-old eyes.

Opening the door those memories, has not been a painless. To be honest I wonder if it will make any difference at all or is it simply a form of self-flagellation? I began with an essay on my breakdown in my senior year of high school, an admission that even so many years later is extraordinarily painful. I’m still humiliated at the thoughts of my actions and the loss of what could have been or should have been.

I had tried to give my therapist a copy of what I had written but she insisted I read it to her. As usual she had a couple of seemingly innocent questions. The result of which was an hours’ worth of pain pouring out in waves of tears. Her suggestion, a letter written to my seventeen-year-old self, to give myself credit for picking up the pieces of that shattered year and going on.

I have tried, oh how I have tried. Hours later I find myself sitting amidst a virtual pile of crumpled papers, no closer to understanding how to absolve my younger self. It sounds so simple, but again, how do you do that?

I could explain how I understand now that I did not have the tools to cope with all that was going on at the time. The hormones that brought feelings I didn’t understand, changing me into someone I didn’t want to be. The competitiveness of the adolescent world in which I didn’t wish to participate. The fear of being different, the anxiety of potentially being found out.

I can tell you to forgive yourself but I know you wouldn’t or more accurately couldn’t. You believe at some level that you deserved all of it, gods payback for all the perverted thoughts. The cutting binding, stabbing, burning, and all the pain generated at my own hands, at your own hands, was the cost of enjoying a moment in our alternate world. That world you dreamed of is now reality for me and will be someday for you.

That I couldn’t save you from the pain has meant that you were unable to save me from the regrets. You’ll come out the other side of this ordeal slightly broken and definitely scarred, but you will survive.