21. Never Mine to Carry #2
He shakes his head. “Cordell’s truck crashed into my driver’s door, pinning my left leg and arm.
He had the bigger vehicle, and the impact was mostly on his passenger side, so he only had a few bumps and bruises.
They had to cut my car apart to get me out.
I was in the hospital for a while. Plus, I had several surgeries, physical therapy for a year, and I missed most of the last half of my senior year as I was recovering.
And I lost my scholarship and my spot on the team. ”
“Oh, Owen. I am so sorry.” I know my words aren’t enough for something so awful, but I don’t know what else to say.
“I did get to go to my senior prom, though! With a knee brace.” He chuckles. “I tell you, if you ever need an accessory to go with formalwear, that’s one that will get you all the care and attention.”
That easy smile of his is back. “And there were a lot of great things that happened because of it. You know, sometimes life doesn’t go like you had planned. It takes you down a path that you never saw coming and ends up being pretty amazing .
“For example, I’m left-handed, but because of surgeries, my left arm was out of commission for quite a while. So I had to get good at using my right hand. And for a guy working in construction, I can tell you that it sure comes in hand y now. See what I did there?”
I chuckle.
“Since I couldn’t be on the football team in college, I spent more mental energy on school.
And since I no longer had a scholarship, I had to work my way through college, which I did by working part-time for a construction company.
Most architectural restoration specialists research, assess, evaluate, plan, and oversee.
Which are all parts that I love. But I also love getting in there and doing the hands-on construction work, too.
Having that extra experience is a big part of what allowed me to do both.
“It also made me a hard worker. More focused. And it opened a lot more opportunities to me. Sometimes you don’t get what you want, but you get what you need, you know?”
I nod and study him for a long moment. Then I say, “It sounds like there were a lot of things that really worked to your benefit in the end.”
“Yeah.”
“So why is there still a sadness behind your smile?”
He rubs his forehead with his fingertips and then shakes his head, chuckling. “I should’ve guessed you would figure out that wasn’t all there was to it.”
He is silent for a long moment, and I can see him working through things.
Finally, he says, “It took so many months of pain and so much effort to get past those injuries. There may have been plenty of good things that came from it, but Cordell’s poor choice cost me so much.
My knee still gives me pain almost daily.
Especially during some tasks or when the weather is bad.
It even stops me from doing some things.
“I’d heard that Cordell had driven drunk before, but he’d never been caught.
So for our crash, he was considered a first-time offender.
He was a good running back—he had a scholarship, too.
Since he did, he had such a bright future ahead of him, and no one seemed to want to destroy that future. So the court let him off easy.
“It felt like they were saying that it was okay to ruin my future, but not his. My coach didn’t feel the same way, so Cordell was kicked off the team, but at that point, it didn’t matter. The season was over, and it was his senior year.”
“Do you know what happened to him after that?”
He shakes his head. “I’d like to say that things went poorly enough for him that it seemed like he got what he deserved, but from what I know, everything is going well for the guy.
I heard he turned his life around. Maybe he did, or maybe it’s all smoke and mirrors—I don’t know.
I just know that it never seemed like he got any kind of punishment.
“And I know I’m supposed to forgive him.
Everyone says that forgiving someone else helps you more than it helps them, but I just don’t really know how.
I’ve spent plenty of time putting myself into Cordell’s shoes, trying to understand the reasons behind his drinking and what made him think that driving was okay.
But no matter what I do, I can’t just dismiss what he did or think that it’s okay. I can’t seem to forgive or forget.”
I’m silent for a moment. Then I tell him, “I don’t think you’re supposed to forget when someone harms you. Because then how would anyone keep from putting themselves into the same situation again if they did?”
“Good point.”
“My family went through some hard times when I was little,” I tell him.
“And then some really hard times when my dad died, especially because it was at the hands of another person.” It takes a moment to figure out how to say what I’m trying to say.
“When I was little, my brothers and I sometimes did mean things to each other. You know, kid stuff, like taking another’s toy, hitting, pulling hair, calling names.
“For a while, when I was probably four, we had a nanny who would always make the person who was mean apologize to the sibling, which was great, but then the sibling who was mean had to ask, ‘Do you forgive me?’ The one who was the victim was supposed to say, ‘I forgive you,’ no matter how mad we still were, as if it was part of the process of apologizing.
I hated it. I felt like they were supposed to be magic words that would make everything better, except it never really did.
“I think that messed up the way I thought about it for so long. After my dad was killed, I was so sad and angry. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to forgive and why people always said that forgiving was for you and not the other person.
“I don’t think it’s at all about getting to a point where you feel that what the other person did was okay.
I don’t necessarily think you need to understand why they did it, either, although it can help.
And if you had a relationship with the person who hurt you, I don’t think that repairing the relationship—or not—has anything to do with it, either.
I don’t think the person who caused the harm even needs to know if you’ve forgiven them. ”
Owen is looking at me earnestly, like he really wants to hear what I say, so I continue.
“Every time I hurt inside because my dad was taken away from us, I wanted the people responsible for it to hurt every bit as much as I did. I wanted them to know how much pain they caused us over such a long period of time. I wanted them to truly understand the full cost of their actions and to feel absolutely horrible that they did it. I wanted them to have to pay as high a price for it as we were.”
“That’s understandable.”
“One day, I realized how much time I kept spending thinking about them and about what I wanted them to feel. At the same time, I was thinking about how much that was doing harm to me. It was making me relive it and feel that pain more deeply. It wasn’t making them feel any worse—it was only making me feel worse.
“I was carrying the responsibility of them feeling bad. Like if I got past it or didn’t think about it, then they weren’t going to have any consequences. It was such a heavy load.
“That’s when it finally clicked for me, and I realized that forgiveness wasn’t something that I granted to the other person.
It was about me letting go of carrying the mental burden of their consequences on my shoulders.
It was about turning the responsibility for what was going to happen to them that would make things right or balance things out over to God, the universe, the law, karma, a higher power—whatever you believe in—to take care of it.
“It’s not your responsibility. It was already theirs and had been all along.
So, if you hold onto that responsibility, too, then it only harms you.
It does nothing to the person who caused the harm.
If you turn it over, then you’re released from carrying that burden.
That’s why forgiveness helps the forgiver. ”
Owen looks at me for a long time, like he’s taking me in. But also like he’s thinking through everything, so I stay quiet and let him.
Eventually, he says, “I really needed to hear that. Thank you.”
I smile. I like it when I can be helpful.
He gets a sly smile on his face and says, “Do you want me to thank you with kisses or with what I brought in that box over there?”
I glance over my shoulder at the pastry box on the table.
I’ve tried pretty much everything that Muffin to See Here makes, and I love it all.
But I also really love Owen’s kisses. So I turn back to him and say, “Yes.” He laughs and stands to go get the box, but I grab his hand and pull him back down to the couch. “Kisses first.”
“That, I can do,” he says. Then he presses his lips against mine and pulls me in close. I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him just as close as we both sink into the kiss, whatever might be in that pastry box completely forgotten.