38. The Power of Forgiveness
THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS
Forgiveness is supposed to feel clean—some soft wash of clarity that settles over you once you’ve finally let go. At least, that’s what people say. The truth is heavier than that. Forgiveness is work. It’s choosing not to hold your own hurt like a shield even when it feels safer.
It’s waking up and realizing the resentment you’ve been carrying is shaping you into someone you don’t want to be.
I feel that shift the morning after another night of barely sleeping.
The apartment is quiet except for the low hum of the heater and the soft rise and fall of Liam’s breathing from the monitor.
Sunlight slips through the blinds in thin lines, striping the living room floor.
I sit on the couch with my knees pulled up, the blanket I never bothered folding wrapped around my shoulders.
The silence isn’t peaceful; it’s just… still.
The kind of stillness that forces you to hear the things you’ve been pushing away.
My chest aches with the weight of the last few weeks.
The arguments. The clipped conversations.
The nights spent wondering how we drifted so far from the version of us we promised each other would never break.
Marriage was supposed to make us stronger, not expose how fragile our balance really is.
But life didn’t slow down for us. It didn’t pause when we said “I do.” Everything just kept moving, and somewhere in the rush, we lost sight of each other.
“What am I doing?” I whisper into the quiet, not expecting an answer.
I think about the beginning—before diapers, before rent, before long-distance calendars and work deadlines and daycare illnesses.
Back when loving Reid felt like inhaling.
Effortless. Natural. Back when his smile could pull me out of any mood, and I never questioned whether we could survive whatever came next.
We grew up together. We survived teenage chaos and unexpected parenthood and the grind of transitioning into adulthood with far fewer tools than we actually needed. We survived separation, fear, loss, pressure—so much pressure—and somehow still found our way back to each other.
I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose him.
My phone buzzes on the cushion beside me.
For a long moment, I just stare at the notification lighting up the screen—his name, the preview of something longer than a text bubble usually shows.
My heart clenches. Reid doesn’t send long messages unless he’s been thinking.
Really thinking. I swipe quickly before I can talk myself out of it.
Amelia, I’ve been sitting in the library for an hour trying to figure out how to say any of this. I don’t know if I’m saying the right things, and I don’t know if it even matters anymore, but I need you to hear me. I inhale sharply and read on.
I know I haven’t been the partner you deserve these last few months.
I know you’ve been carrying way more than your share, and I should’ve been there to lift some of it with you instead of letting school swallow me whole.
I don’t want you thinking I don’t see how hard you work—for Liam, for us, for yourself. I do.
I just didn’t say it out loud, and that’s on me.
My eyes burn, but I blink the sting away and keep reading.
I’m scared too, Ames. Not of you. Not of us.
But of failing—failing school, failing you, failing Liam.
I thought if I just kept pushing harder, it would take pressure off you, but instead it just put more distance between us. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
There’s a long section after that. Something he must have rewritten three or four times because a few sentences repeat, but in slightly different ways—as if he couldn’t decide which version sounded more honest.
I miss you. I miss the way we talk, the way we laugh, the way we team up even when things are hard.
I hate that you’ve felt alone. I hate that I’ve made you feel that way.
I don’t want to keep hurting each other.
I want to fix this. I want to be better.
For you. For us. Then the last lines hit hardest.
I love you. That hasn’t changed. Even when I didn’t say it right, even when I didn’t show it well, it never changed. Please don’t give up on us yet.
My breath shudders out of me. I close the message, then open it again almost immediately, needing to see the words one more time to be sure they were real and not just something I imagined in a moment of desperation.
He’s trying. Really trying. And I realize—I haven’t been perfect either.
I’ve snapped. Withdrawn. Prioritized work until I was too drained to offer him the benefit of my patience.
I’ve held my resentment like evidence, stacking every small disappointment into a quiet case against him.
I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize how much I’d been doing it until now.
Forgiveness doesn’t erase the hurt. It doesn’t pretend the cracks never formed.
But maybe it gives you permission to stop pressing on the bruise long enough for healing to start.
Liam wakes up a few minutes later with the soft, sleepy whine he always makes when he’s not quite ready to leave his dreams. I go into his room and scoop him up.
His arms loop around my neck like they always do, instinctive and warm.
His small weight grounds me, reminds me what matters most.
“Morning, Mama,” he says into my shoulder, voice groggy.
“Morning, baby.”
I carry him into the kitchen and start breakfast. He swings his legs from the booster seat and watches me with big, curious eyes. I think about the family we’re trying to build for him. The stability he needs.
The love he deserves to grow up seeing—not the tired version, not the distant version, not the version weighed down by stress and silence. I want him to see us try. Not perfectly. Not effortlessly. Just honestly.
When my phone buzzes again, I expect it to be Reid asking if I read the message. But it’s just an email from work. A reminder that the world doesn’t stop moving for relationship crises. I set the phone facedown and finish breakfast quietly.
As I help Liam into his tiny sneakers, my thoughts return to Reid’s message—the vulnerability, the admission of fear, the acknowledgment of my effort. He didn’t defend himself. He didn’t counterattack. He didn’t minimize what I felt. He took responsibility. That matters.
By the time I pull Liam’s jacket zipper all the way up, my decision is already forming. Not a full answer. Not a solution. Just a step. I’m not ready to pretend everything is fixed. But I’m ready to stop letting the silence between us do the talking.
“Ready, sweetheart?” I ask.
He nods and lifts his hands for me to carry him. His trust is immediate, unquestioning. I want to rebuild that kind of ease with Reid again—not blind, but chosen. As we head out the door, the cold air hits my face, sharp and bracing. It wakes me up fully.
Forgiveness isn’t a single moment. It’s a direction. And maybe… maybe today is the first time I’ve actually turned toward it. The cursor blinks at me like it has its own heartbeat.
Reid’s message is still open on my laptop. I’ve read it three times already, slowly the first time, faster the second, and then once more just to make sure the words don’t rearrange themselves into something easier. They don’t. They stay raw. Honest. Unpolished in a way he never lets himself be.
I know I haven’t been the partner you needed. I know I shut down when things get heavy. I never meant to make you feel alone…I just didn’t know how to carry everything without breaking something. Mostly myself. I stare at that line the longest.
For weeks I’ve walked around with the belief that he wasn’t seeing me, but the truth is more complicated: he wasn’t seeing himself either. He was burning from both ends and hoping I wouldn’t notice the smoke.
Liam naps on the couch, curled sideways with his dinosaur blanket over half his face.
The apartment is the kind of quiet that only happens when a toddler is unconscious and the universe decides to give you one small mercy.
My phone buzzes once—Hazel sending a meme—and I silence it without opening it.
I’m not ready to talk to anyone else until I talk to Reid.
I take a breath, open a new message thread, and type.
Can we talk? Really talk?
His reply comes faster than I expect.
Reid: Yes. Whenever you're ready. I’m near the dorm, but I can go somewhere private. Just call.
My chest tightens, but not in the painful way it has in recent weeks. This is different. Nerves, yes, but quieter. Sharper. The kind that comes before you peel back a bandage. I step into the hallway for privacy and press the call button. He answers by the second ring.
“Hey,” he says, voice soft, cautious.
“Hi.”
It’s a single syllable, but it still shakes something loose between us. For a moment, neither of us speaks. Not because we don’t have anything to say—if anything, we’ve accumulated too much—but because we’re both waiting to see who steps first into the open. I do.
“Your message…” My throat tightens, but I push through it. “It meant a lot.”
A shift in his breathing. “I meant every word.”
“I know.” I walk to the window and press my hand to the glass. The cold steadies me. “I wasn’t expecting you to apologize for everything. You shouldn’t. Some of this is on me too.”
He swallows audibly. “Like what?”
“That I didn’t tell you sooner when things were breaking for me.
I tried to hold everything together until it snapped.
And instead of saying I needed help, I just…
kept adding more weight.” The words sting coming out, but they’re honest. “You didn’t deserve to be the last thing I tended to at the end of every day. ”
“Amelia.” His voice cracks just slightly. “I never wanted you to feel like I was a burden.”
“You weren’t. That’s the problem. You weren’t. But I let everything around us become one.”