For me, I've re-discovering a fleeting insight I've had now and then. There is a certain kind of magnanimity that I have felt sometimes in the past when I extended myself to "forgive" someone that had a tone of grandiosity to it.
And it always came back to bite me. I think I was giving away something I didn't have to give. I think I was doing that to make myself feel like a bigger, better person. When inside me were totally different feelings that were not half so pleasant. But they were fierce. And pent up. And determined to be expressed one way or another.
I think that is a profound insight right there.
I've been told (and probably said, myself, at times) that "forgiveness is not a
feeling, it's a
decision."
Well, I sort of think that's some pretty advanced
at this point in my life. Because my experience is just like yours -- when I
forced myself to forgive, it wasn't
forgiveness. I did a little superior dance and felt like I was so much better than the person I was allegedly "forgiving" because they were bad people and I had decided to be magnanimous and not hold it against them. All the while wishing the karma bus would run them over. Pronto.
You have every right to be angry. I can't say I'm anywhere close to
forgiving my AXH. I've gone from wishing him a painful excruciating torturously slow death to sometimes having compassion for him, stuck as he is in a hell on earth. Realizing that hey, being an alcoholic is pretty much a painful excruciating torturously slow death. And feeling compassion for him for choosing to not get off that path despite the option being available to him.
I can rationally see that his alcoholism prevents him from understanding the width of the hurt he has caused. That doesn't mean he is not responsible for that harm. It just means he doesn't know he is. And that nothing I can do or say will ever make him see the extent of the damage he has done. And maybe that's as close as I'll ever get to forgiveness -- let go of the desire to try to make him understand and make him suffer.
Causing irreparable harm to the people God has given you to protect is something that is hard to forgive. I can let go of it, I can name it and explain it and know why he was able to do things that were outright evil. Can I forgive it? I don't know. Do I have an obligation to? I don't know. Should I try? In my mind, only to the extent it helps me.