'Forgive and forget.' Yeah right. Forgiveness—the very act of forgiving—is hard. To forgive someone means to rise above all the pain and all the hurt you've undergone because of them, to put it behind you, and to see the world with clear, stronger eyes.

Some of us can't—okay, most of us can't. It's hard. And, unlike Caesar, we can't say 'Et tu, Brute' and stop breathing, although it hurts just as hard. The hurt of betrayal, humiliation—the basic act of being hurt by somebody is like a festering wound—it takes a long time to heal, and once healed, it throbs absently and can always be reopened. If you push it to the back of your mind and try to forget, it'll pop up when you least need it—not that you need it at all. If you try to examine that hurt, you'll be opening those wounds again and it'll hurt twice as bad. And it won't clear up.

People's opinions don't help much, either. Some people say 'Make them pay. Dearly.' Some others say 'Just let it go. It's not worth it.' Some people tell you to take that emotion and do something constructive with it, others tell you it's a waste of time, and more often than not, you're told to be the better person. And that's very annoying, when all you want to do is stomp your feet and wail.

But there were some words that really got to me: 'Somewhere beyond the pain there must be a way to learn forgiveness'—from the song 'What you want' by Evanescence. Pain, like every other feeling, fades. It does throb once in a while, maybe to remind you you've been hurt, maybe to remind you that you're stronger now. But it's up to you, whether you want to remind yourself of your hurt back then or of your strength right now.

'Forgive and forget.' My personal thought is that, God is the only one who can truly forgive. The rest of us can try and forget and move on.

Because the only way to go is forward.