Forgiveness

This is a touchy subject for me. I recently changed my mind about how I think of forgiveness. I used to think, well I forgive, but I will not forget! Now I think about it like this, if I forgive and not forget, how much did I truly forgive? If you think about it a lot of times people will mistreat your kindness and walk all over you, but when you hold a grudge you are only hurting yourself. People tend not to even remember that they hurt you. It is not even a second thought to them, they have already moved on to hurting someone else. Do not get me wrong though, there are people that will see what they did wrong, acknowledge it, and try to right their wrong. I know that I have personally hurt a few people, some I apologized to, but there are some that I feel its best I just walk away and not cross paths with them again. Regardless of what people tell you, everyone has feelings and are vulnerable to pain. I feel though if you can minimize the pain you feel within yourself than you owe that to yourself. I am the type of person that feels that everyone needs help sometimes, but I have been used and it hurt. The thing about it though is I would be wrong to not lend a hand to a person that truly needs it because I am still feeling the pain of someone that abused my kindness. I refuse to let the people that hurt me keep a piece of my heart and sanity. I forgive and will forget them. If one day we cross paths again my conscience will be clear. If theirs is also clear, than thats fine. I can not hold on to pain, simply because I bet they are not!