MediumForgive and Forget.. People always say “forgive and forget”… | by yyoungest. | Sep, 2026 | Medium
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yyoungest.

yyoungest.

2 min readSep 26, 2026

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Forgive and Forget.

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“forgive and forget” no, I forgive but I will never forget.

People always say “forgive and forget” as if forgiveness means completely erasing everything that happened. As if, once you’ve decided to forgive someone, you’re supposed to forget the words that hurt, the moments that changed you, and the feelings you had to carry when no one else could see them. But I dont think it works that way, I think some things stay with us, not because we want to live in the past.. but because they became part of our story.

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I can accept that it happened without wishing it never did, and I can make peace with it without pretending that it didn’t hurt.

I can forgive you for the things you said, the things you did, and even the things you never realized left a mark. I forgive u because i dont want anger to be the only thing i remember when i think of what happened. It took time, but eventually, I learned that forgiving someone doesn’t mean saying they were right, and it doesn’t mean everything suddenly becomes okay.

sometimes, forgiveness is just choosing to stop carrying something that was never meant to stay with you forever. I can understand, accept, and let go without needing an apology to change what happened. I can wish u well, even from distance, and still choose peace for myself.

But I will remember, I’ll remember how it felt, what it taught me, and how it changed the way i see certain things, not to hold it against you, not to make you feel guilty, and not because i’m still angry. I remember because forgetting would mean forgetting the version of myself who had to get through it, too. So no, I won’t “forgive and forget” I will forgive, and i will move forward. I will let the pain become a lesson instead of a wound i keep reopening, because forgiveness isn’t about erasing the past — it’s about being able to look back at it, remember everything, and realize that it no longer has the power to hurt me the way it once did.

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