Forgiveness is a tricky thing. Sometimes, you don’t necessarily mean it when you forgive someone. Or, you’ll forgive a person who doesn’t care whether they’re forgiven or not, but because you care about them, their actions are always excused. You may decide to forgive someone to clear your conscience, or you might even do it to clear theirs. Most of the time, though, there are people who don’t deserve to be forgiven at all.

The concept of forgiveness and the word “sorry” go hand-in-hand. If you apologise to someone or forgive someone enough times, sincerity is practically transparent. Unfortunately, these kinds of situations happen every single day, and some are worse than others. A woman (or man) may end up forgiving their controlling abuser to ease the tension in a strained relationship, or in my case, a father could beg for forgiveness from his daughter even though he's always been verbally abusive and always will be.

I won't get into specifics, but for most of my adolescent life, I was constantly manipulated by my father. I was verbally and emotionally abused, and I went into a serious depression because of it. My soul was blackened, my happiness was nonexistent, and my mind was warped into believing the wrong things. My life was headed south for a long time, until my parents finally had a legal separation; that was when I developed the courage to stop accepting my father’s apologies. For so long, my family forgave my father for what he’d done because it made our lives easy, but it never made our lives better.

It was only when I was free of him, when all of us were free of him, that I no longer felt obligated to appease him. He hurt me, and although he refused to take responsibility for what he did, he expected forgiveness; he expected everything to be okay even though he’s never made an attempt to change his ways. He’s never deserved my forgiveness, and he’ll probably never receive it.

If you’re reading this, and you're in a situation where you're conflicted about what to do - about whether or not you should forgive the person who torched your being and set it ablaze - know that you do not owe them anything. You don't owe them your time or your sympathy, and you don't owe them kindness. If they hurt you, that’s on them. Forgiveness, much like respect, should be bestowed upon someone when you feel it's earned; it’s meaningless if you do it for the other person’s benefit. Depending on the severity of your situation as well as your current mental/emotional state, it can be hard to know what the right thing to do is, but I've learned the hard way that you do not need to forgive someone who hurt you. The most you can do is accept them for who they are. My father will always break his promises, and he will always manipulate the people around him, and I can't change that. I can only accept it and move forward with my own life, and feel content with the fact that he's no longer apart of it. I hope that the ones reading this will empathise, and I hope you find the strength and the courage to make the right decisions for yourselves.