I consider myself a kind and forgiving person. However, forgiveness is difficult and sometimes I, just like everyone else, can't seem to forgive people for some things that they've said or done. These are some of the things that we think about at night when we can't sleep, becoming increasingly hurt or angry as the memory replays in our brains. "Unforgivables" stick with us for life, causing us grief and stress when we least expect them. They are in control of us.

Forgiveness is the only way to regain control from the unforgivables. But their very name states why this feat is hardly accomplished: they're unforgivable. The next best thing to forgiveness is acceptance. Acceptance is saying "Yes, this happened to me and it sucked. But I can't change it and won't let it change me anymore."

One of my personal favorite ways to achieve acceptance is to rant. You get out all of your frustration so that you can calm down and say "Okay, I'm done with this." I've compiled a list of some of my unforgivables below so that I can rant my heart out until I can accept them. Hopefully by the time I'm done, some of you can figure out how to accept things as well.

Disclaimer: Yes, these are all about real people, but I am going to leave names out and make them as general as possible so I'm not putting anyone on blast.

Being disgusted by physical contact with me

It was middle school. You were an obnoxious pre-teen boy who thought he was cool, and I was a dork who liked to read and was fairly obnoxious myself. You were standing near me talking to your friend and your hand brushed my butt. I don't think you meant for me to hear when you cringed and said "Eugh, I need to go wash my hand now." But I did, and I also heard your friend laugh. You obviously only cared about appearing cool and being funny. You never considered what your rude jokes did to me. Do you have any idea how ashamed I was? It was bad enough that the boys I had a crush on thought I was weird. But your disgust at touching me, whether real or a joke, took my already low, middle-school self confidence and trashed it. I wasn't "hot," as I so wanted to be. I wasn't even average. I was disgusting.

It took me five years to finally see something good in myself. I finally escaped the awkward puberty stage, stopped crushing on boys who didn't care about me, and got my first boyfriend. I could finally admit to myself that I was pretty. But I still wondered, "Do you still think I'm disgusting? Would you joke about touching me now?" Because of you, I had a nagging voice inside of me for years, telling me I wash gross. But no more.

Trying to spread rumors about me

It was still middle school, but I was older now and so were you. You were one of those kids who didn't take school seriously and tried to inflict your "school is a joke" attitude on everyone else, at their expense sometimes. You overheard me talking about buying a pack of six earrings, but then insisted that I said I bought "a pack of cigs." I was indignant, and I argued against you. It's a shame I didn't see my mistake coming. When I get flustered, the words coming out of my mouth get jumbled. It really wasn't my fault when "I didn't buy cigarettes!" came out as "I did buy cigarettes!" You had the ammunition you needed to fire your gun. You ran around to our classmates, in every class we had together, telling them that I smoke. You would walk past me in the hallway and pretended to hold a cigarette to your lips. No one believed you when you said I smoked, because they knew my character well enough. I was a goody-two-shoes who excelled in school, and you were the kid who tried to ruin everybody's day. But it wasn't just a day. It was weeks that you spent harassing me until the point of tears. It got to the point where seeing you struck fear into my heart. I was even scared seeing you outside of school. But that's what you wanted; you wanted to see me, someone who was academically successful, in distress so you could laugh at them just like you laughed at school. But no more.

Telling me my teeth are yellow

It was the last year of middle school. I was crushing hard on you. I looked forward to the one class where we sat near each other every day. I glowed every time you would say something remotely nice to me. My happiness was a word spoken by you. However, letting all of my happiness rely on the words that came out of your nonchalant mouth was a ticking time bomb. It would only take one word for you to break me. And break me you did.

I had always known that my teeth were slightly yellow. I was self conscious about it but didn't think much of it. Smiling meant that I was happy, and that was what mattered. Except that all the smiling I did around you revealed my yellow teeth. When one day you carelessly told me, "Y'know, your teeth are yellow," I was mortified. Suddenly, I knew you knew I had imperfections and the fantasy relationship I was imagining seemed to be just that, a fantasy. But I was still so "in love" with you. It wasn't your fault for pointing out my insecurities in such a rude and careless way, it was my fault that they were yellow. As soon as you went back to joking around and talking about how good my art was, I collected all the fractured pieces of my young heart in a little bag and left them there. My heart couldn't ever escape that bag in such a weak and fragile state. It would remain in that metaphorical bag with your name on it for years. But no more.

Harassing me for not appreciating your "jokes"

I had just entered high school. We constructed an amazing and fun friend group, with you and I at the head. You were hilarious and kept all of us laughing. Your jokes about how my best guy friend and I would be a great couple were funny at first. But the more you made them and insisted on making them, the more uncomfortable my boyfriend at the time and I felt. So I asked you to stop. It was a simple request that would put me and my boyfriend at ease; why was it so hard for you to see that? You became defensive immediately, as you always did in the face of criticism. You said we couldn't take a joke. You said my boyfriend was weak for not talking to you about it himself. You spent every moment you could harassing me and him in front of my friends. You never directly stated who you were talking about, but everyone knew that the shade you were throwing was aimed at us. You wanted us to regret thinking that something you did was wrong. We did regret it, because you made us miserable for weeks. But no more.

Manipulating me and everyone else

We were on a team together, designing a product that we'd release free on the internet. I was one of the team's artists, and you were the leader. You didn't contribute anything, just organized things and told people what to do. You were kind at first, to everyone. You praised our work. You made us believe we were going to create great things. You even sweet-talked people into leaving other projects for ours. But then, slowly, you started to turn against the other teams designing similar products. You called them our competition and did everything you could to slander, fault, and ultimately destroy them. You used devious and maybe even illegal means for this purpose, and tried to get the team to work with you on this. Some of us did, but the rest of us did not condone such behavior. You singlehandedly created a rift in the team and expected us to work like we did for the rest of our time on the project. And when someone disagreed with you, or when they performed below your expectations on a task, you would rip them to shreds. You made me cry more times than I would like to admit over the stupidest of arguments. Sometimes you would even tell me I was useless to the team. But then, you would start being kind again and deny that you'd ever been mean to me. You'd say such nice things about me and compliment my work so profusely. You were the perfect example of the "cycle of violence": you would push someone to their breaking point and then be as sweet as can be, trying to win their affections back until you exploded again. I regret saying that your tricks worked on me multiple times. But no more.

Thinking you're better than me

We were just two friends who liked to do art together. You were branching into a new, hyper-realistic art style that was really cool. I stuck with my simple but realistic style because it was what I liked. But as you embraced this new style, you started to think that your art was better than mine because of it, despite the fact that one style is not inherently better than the other. We had always had a habit of criticizing each other's work so we could improve, but all of a sudden, my critiques were useless. You called me "Bob Ross" and yourself "Picasso," and said that I had no right to tell you that something was wrong with your art. Excuse me? The fact that I have eyes gives me the right. I can tell when something is off because I can see it. Plus, Bob Ross is a lovely artist - he is just incredibly different from Picasso and did not influence the creation of a new branch of art (which, by the way, you didn't either). You cannot allude to one piece of art being below another just because of the style. That's like saying pennies are worth more than dimes because they have a larger circumference. You infuriated me with that remark. And though I knew that my art was great, your harsh words made me want to avoid showing it off to people because I was afraid of encountering someone as ridiculous as you. But no more.

Using your self-harm against me

We were best friends in high school, but you got jealous of how close I was to one of our mutual friends. You claimed that that friendship was destroying our friend group and hurting you. You told me that the fact that I was such good friends with this person made you cut yourself. I didn't know you cut yourself, and to this day, I am still heartbroken that you did. But make no mistake, I will not be accepting responsibility for your self-harm.

First of all, your self-harm is not my fault. You have a problem inside of you in which you can't process your distress normally. You identified that the best outlet for your emotions is to inflict pain upon yourself. You may have been distressed because of me, but I did not cause you to cut. I had nothing to do with it. You did it. You need help, and I hope since you told me that you cut, you got some.

Second of all, I refuse to be manipulated by you. The only reason you told me about your cutting was to manipulate me, make me pity you enough so that I'd stay away from my friend. You were trying to control me and use your self-harm as a weapon. Cutting yourself is a serious issue that should not be taken lightly, but the fact that you are willing to wield it against me shows that you aren't treating it like it's a serious problem. You tried to make me feel guilty for your issues and abandon my friend for you. But no more.

Turning my friends against me

Our high school friend group was perfect. We all got along so well, and we vowed to be sisters for life. But I think you realized that you didn't have as much control over the group as you would like to. And I think you realized that I was in your way of getting that control. You wanted to be our Regina George, and I was sweet, well-liked Cady Heron, stealing your spotlight. So you did whatever you could to take away my status of well-liked friend. You talked about me behind my back. You played the victim. And you manipulated everyone, including me. You got me to play in your little gossip game. I have no doubt that when I started to talk about you behind your back, you convinced our friends that I was lying or that I was some horrible person for gossiping about poor little you. I felt so bad for our friends, torn between us. But then, I felt worse for myself, as I watched almost all of them, even some that I had known for all my life, cling to you. I suddenly found myself with only one of my original friends by the end of the school year. I let myself feel sorry about myself, and then went on to feel angry at my old friends for choosing you over me. But it wasn't their fault; they were pawns in your game designed to hurt me. But no more.

Abusing your boyfriend

I'm sure you don't see it this way. You probably just think he was the worst boyfriend in the world, and he hurt you so much. But he was my friend too, and I was heartbroken watching what my best friend was doing to such a nice guy. You definitely don't see all the harm you did to him. Maybe it was because none of it was physical. But you hit 6/10 of these signs of an abusive relationship weekly. You belittled him and his interests. You tried to control his life in every way possible, from what kind of jokes he could make to how long he could stay out at night. You put so many constrictions on his life, but anytime he asked you not to do something you would explode. How dare he not feel comfortable with you doing something! And yet you weren't comfortable with anything he did. He would have to lie to you when he would go out with friends, because you wouldn't approve of who he was with or what he was doing and that would always lead to a fight. And you always guilted him into apologizing, even if you made him mad for a change. Nothing was ever your fault. You were always the victim and he was always "hurting you" somehow. You would threaten to break up with him when you were mad at him, and threaten to kill yourself when he was mad at you. I can't believe you stayed together as long as you did, with you both uncomfortable with each other's actions and miserable about your relationships. I used to feel bad for both of you; I wanted you to work out and I felt bad that you were so hurt, no matter how awful you treated him. But no more.