the exceptional.

Forgiveness doesn't come in a box with a manual or step-by-step procedures. It doesn't tell you where or how to begin. It's not something that you can plan a day earlier or do it spontaneously. I don't even think there's a word formed to cater for its definition.

Few people are born with this innate ability to easily forgive others. No matter how big or insignificant they owe you. I used to be a social outcast at seven. Illiterate and quiet kids were never popular. I ate my lunch alone till I felt such a loser that I skipped it altogether, can save money too. Kill two birds with one stone.

But then somehow my brain started to develop rapidly and the lateralization of the brain became active. It wasn't hard to be number one in class. And with the success, comes friends. Kids who sneered at me, stared at me like I have ten huge tentacles, you named it. They stick like glue, all of a sudden. I never talked once about their past monstrous behaviour. Just like that, I forgave them because it didn't matter to me. What a loser, I should have at least demand compensation.

Secondary school was no different. Probably there was this sick rule that when the principal punish you, then hate the daughter. Snob, stuck-up were the usual ones I got, mostly because I didn't talk much. I survived it just well, and not one of them that I didn't forgive. Forgiveness comes easy for me. Always have.

But there is this one person that no matter how hard I push myself to forgive her, I couldn't.

I went to sleep every night for the past few years and had to spend the first few minutes looking for any openings in my heart to forgive this person. My mum said that before we sleep, we need to find it in us the will to forgive so as to move on. I couldn't find it, not a single soft spot that the will can penetrate.

She was eighteen back then, I told myself repeatedly. And people at eighteen screwed up all the time, so just give her a break. She's a changed person now, forgive her already. Then a voice inside said differently; that eighteen-year-old girl screwed up someone's dream and left without an apology or mending anything. She shaped the dream herself, gave it to someone, and later thrashed it away. Just like that, I couldn't forgive her.

And now she's collecting the pieces of that lost dream, trying to glue them back together. As I watched her, I have this urge to shake her and tell her to stop because all the jagged pieces will cut her. But I know she couldn't hear me because she's too busy rewriting her past, wanting to go back and prevent herself from screwing up.

Like I said, I could easily forgive everyone. Except this person who matters the most - myself.