Project S.M.I.L.E. (Forgiveness)

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My Own Smile Story

A smile is an outside manifestation of the happiness or joy we feel inside. How we feel, whether we are sad, angry, disappointed or happy, will reflect on our faces.

My life has its own share of trials and having to go through it is not an easy peasy journey. I have shared my ordeal of having a clinical depression and its multiple relapses. This condition made smiling burdensome but I mastered faking it. I took medicines and had a therapy with a psychologist just to get well.

Unable to suffice the treatment, I looked for a cheaper way to help me recuperate from depression. That was when I got introduced to a church community. The community taught me to open up to people who will not judge me, and now I have my support system (family, friends, and loved ones).

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I was already recovering from depression, sharing genuine smiles when I experienced a hellish experience. It was the taste of betrayal from my Dad. It made my 2017 dreadful and awaken the sadness inside me. It was not as grave as before since I learned to control my thoughts, but it made me cry gallons of tears.

It was painful because of the great love I have for him, especially because I am a Daddy's girl. I always look up to him; he knows how to discipline us and to keep the family strong. He went above and beyond what's expected of him as a father. He taught me my worth and treated me like a princess and I loved him for that.

Betrayal is heart-rending and getting it from someone you look up to, someone you dearly love, and a person you consider as your King, is torturous. Seeing your Mom and siblings suffer and cry also added to the heartache. I felt pain, sadness, disappointment, and rage at what he did- it was unforgiving.

Just recently he had the audacity to ask for forgiveness. He begged for it and acknowledged his mistakes and said that he is willing to correct everything. Seeing my family suffer crushed my heart into fine pieces making it difficult to forgive.

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I had nights of thinking it through whether he is worthy of my forgiveness. I seek advice from people I know and received a 50-50 response. My siblings strongly believe that he is not worthy of forgiveness while my Mom wanted us to forgive him. Despite everything, I have chosen to forgive him.

I forgive him not only for a second chance or because he deserves it. It is because I need to let go of what might destroy me and make me a ticking time bomb. I realized that holding on to resentment does not make the situation better, rather it will only snatch my happiness away from me.

Though I have forgiven him, forgetting is a different thing. It is not an overnight procedure and could take a year or so. It is uncontrollable because our mind easily recalls negative things due to physiological and psychological reason.

According to Professor Nass (co-author of The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships), the brain handles positive and negative information in different hemispheres of the brain. Negative emotion tends to do more thinking, this is the reason why information is processed more thoroughly than positive emotions. Thus, we tend to ruminate more about unpleasant events than happy ones.

Forgiving doesn't mean that everything should be back to how it was before; it is a process. We need to help the offender by making them realize that what they've done is wrong and that they have to do something to correct their mistakes. Forgiving is not tolerating the offender of what they have done.

There is a fine line between forgiving and tolerating. We tolerate someone if, after all the offenses, we do not confront the offender and just accept that what was done is fine. Forgiving, on the other hand, is making the offender realize that what they have done is unacceptable and should not happen again.

It is not an easy decision to forgive him. There are times that I just wanted time to erode the pain but I understand that I have to do myself a favor. I know I have to let go of my anger, holding on to it is unhealthy and so my decision to forgive.

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It takes courage and strength to forgive someone who has wronged us. However, realizing the benefits of forgiveness to ourselves is worth more than pride. One of the benefits is having my genuine smile back. Choosing forgiveness over ill-will is the best reason why I can smile better.

Often times life will plague us with problems, which could take away our happiness. This is when despondency kicks in, but we have to remember that we are always in control of our lives. We have to make a decision to either let these situations eat us or to face it and let go.

We cannot always find happiness from other people, it is our decision that will make us happy- we can be our own source of hope. I know I have made the best decision, and that is to forgive. I can now smile genuinely because I choose to and this is my smile story.

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_{Sources: - The New York Times
Image Source: Pixabay}

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