How to deal with resentments?

[Metalhead]

My resentments run extremely deep. I find myself praying that horrible things will happen to the people who sexually abused me when I was a young child, every single night. My family wants me to let these people off the hook for my own sake, whatever the hell that means. My 12 step sponsor is telling me the same thing - to forgive what can never be forgiven or forgotten about.

These people are still free and will never be held accountable for their actions due to statues of limitations and my entire family’s denial that they ever did anything wrong to begin with. And that is leaving me feeling nothing but an ocean of resentment within an even vaster spiritual void.

I gave up beer recently, so I am really feeling all of this right this very second. Merely escaping into video gaming is doing nothing for me now. How could God let these people do what they do and walk free, I often wonder. I hate my life passionately.

 

[Greatshield17]

It's difficult for me to provide any empathetic advice for you when you experienced something so evil and so beyond what I can imagine. The only advice I can give you is, try to meditate on God's Love for you, and try to avoid dwelling on this stuff and letting it re-victimize you; remember that God is Justice Himself, Goodness Himself, Love Himself, trust that He'll set things right.

I'm not sure if you're ready for this, I myself have, only this Christmas Season, managed to finally get over my bad relationship with my parents and really focus on praying for their conversion and work on setting a good example for them and changing the way approach I them. One of the best ways to fight shortcomings is to go directly against them; if you can, if you are able to right now, try to pray for those people's conversion, that they repent of what they did, not to you, although they do owe it to you, but to God who is Justice and Moral Goodness Himself.

 

[Metalhead]

Something came up about this in a conversation with my sponsor earlier today. Yes, I am perfectly aware that the people who abused me were abused in similar ways when they were younger. I am not letting myself off the hook for the ways I acted like a horrible human being while using what happened to me as an excuse, so why should I grant them that kind of grace when their behavior was so much worse than mine ever was? Yeah, I have a tendency to be my own harshest critic, and I am holding my abusers up to the same standards I hold myself up against.

 

[SDRSpark]

I'd love to be able to give you some sage advice but...there's nothing I can say, except that I too know what it's like to be incapable of forgiving or letting go of wrongs done to me. You're not alone at all in this regard. People like to say "you have to let it go" and other platitudes...if only it were that easy.

I think we all forgive, and move on, when we're ready. Not a moment before (and, for the record, a lot of those "I let it go and moved on" folks haven't - what they've done is buried it deep inside, refused to acknowledge it and it'll come out later in some other way). Everyone's time scale is different; as much as we'd all like for there to be some magic formula that gets us to a place where we're ready to let go and move on, there just isn't one.

All that said, are you seeing a therapist? This is the sort of thing that a good therapist can probably help you a lot with.

In the mean time, it's OK not to be OK. Go easy on yourself - there's no need to pile guilt and shame for not being able to forgive on top of all the anger and pain of what happened.