Sorta Fanfic (inspired by BSG)
Please don’t make me forgive him.
I don’t want to.
I can’t.
You can’t know what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen.
And now you ask me to forgive? Forgive this…this… this so called person?
That’s what you want?
Reconciliation you say, but you see this one? There is not enough sorry in the world to make up for what he has done. Our daughters were best friends. They were born on the same day. I remember our husbands standing outside and smoking, placing bets on who would finish first. To this day I don’t remember. The pain was too great.
But I brought that child into the world, and his arms were the first to hold them, after my husband’s and mine, and my husband ran to admire his child, and they ran together up and down the streets day after day; sometimes I don’t think they even knew which mother’s body they had come out of.
This man knew us. He knew we were good! My husband got him a job, lent him money when he was down, and he did the same for us. This man was our friend.
They say that the betrayal of friends is the worst. You expect to see the light of hate in the eyes of strangers, but not from friends, from neighbors, from those you thought you loved.
So it was worse that night. Worse than all the other nights when we had been pulled from our beds, forced to stand outside for random searches and petty violence-that night, he came. Like a coward, he wore a mask, he did not speak, but I still knew him. He had only one pair of shoes, and I knew him that well that just when I saw those shoes I knew it was him.
He pulled me out of my house, then my daughter, then my husband. My daughter and my husband were thrown into a truck and hauled away, I do not know where. I have given to the doctors the few things of theirs I have left, hoping they can pull off of them the DNA, that they will be discovered, their bodies at least, so that I can bring them home-but for now, I have nothing.
This man-he threw me on the ground right there, in front of my house, and I do not know what happened. The gods protected me, in that moment, and I woke up hours later, hair full of mud, body covered in scratches, and I hauled my body into the hut to recover. I left the next morning. I could not stay in that home anymore. I walked until my feet began to bleed, and then I crawled, and then I collapsed, and the next day I started again. I couldn’t stop. I had to be as far away from him as possible. I had to escape.
And now I am here, and I see him again. Dressed up, shiny, a beautiful new suit. This is how you show me a man who nearly broke me, who left me crying in the mud? You give him a suit, even new shoes? Where are my shoes? Where is my new dress? Where is my home, now that he has taken it from me?
You tell me I must forgive. You tell me that it is the right. I want to tell you that you are wrong. I want to scream and wail and rip this man’s face off. I want to hurt him until he hurts like I hurt, like he hurt my daughter and my husband and everyone else he touched.
But I will not. When I close my eyes and think of this, I think of the hatred in his eyes that night. I feel that hatred eating into my soul. I feel it burn. I cannot keep this burning thing inside me. I cannot keep this hate in my soul or I will be like him, and my hatred will spill over and one day I will be no better. So I forgive. I release my hatred. I will not forget. I will tell my story over and over, until the world knows the consequences of too much hate, but I will not hate. May the gods judge us both as we deserve.