Wrongdoing Is Not Forgotten

Before the story begins...

There are questions that do not come to look for an answer, but come to awaken something we buried years ago.

And there are people whose doors we close out of our lives, and then we think we have closed the story with them... until one day comes, when life opens the door anew, not for them to return, but to tell us that they have gone forever.

So what if the news came to you?

What if you were carrying something in your heart you never said? An anger that never went out... a reproach that was never heard... a right you never got back... and a supplication you said in a moment of anguish, then regretted after your anger subsided?

What if someone came to you one morning and said to you:

"The person who wronged you... has died."

Will you cry?

Will you feel relief?

Will you say: "At last God has vindicated me?"

Or will you fall silent for a long time, because death came before you knew exactly what you wanted from him?

You may discover in that moment that a person does not always fear the death of the one who wronged him, but sometimes fears the things that will die with him.

An apology that never arrived. A question that was never asked. A truth that was never known. A word that should have been said. And a story that remained suspended between two people, then life closed its final door without giving them another chance.

We like to divide people easily:

This is a wrongdoer... and this is a wronged person.

But life is not always that simple.

For the wrongdoer may be a wronged person in another story. And the wronged person may have wronged someone else without realizing it. And the person who broke your heart may himself be carrying a broken heart he did not know how to heal.

And this does not make wrongdoing right.

Nor does it make harm acceptable.

Nor does it mean that the wronged person must forget.

But it makes us pause a little before we judge a story of which we have seen only one page.

This novel is not a defense of the wrongdoer.

And it is not a trial of the wronged person.

It is an attempt to look at the human being from the side no one sees.

At the hand that harms... and the heart that suffers... and the eye that weeps away from people... and the person who apologizes inside himself a thousand times, but does not have the courage for an apology.

It is a novel about those who said:

"I will never forgive."

Then the years passed.

And about those who said:

"I have forgotten."

And they were lying to themselves.

And about those who waited for an apology until apology became impossible.

And about those who died while thinking time was long...

Then they discovered that life is shorter than all we postpone.

Wrongdoing was not always a slap.

Sometimes it was a word.

And sometimes it was ignoring.

And sometimes it was a door closed in the face of a person who only needed to be told:

"I believe you."

Wrongdoing does not begin when someone raises his hand against you, but may begin much earlier...

When someone sees your pain and decides to ignore it.

When he knows you are hurting, then uses the place of your pain to hurt you more.

When you give someone a secret, and he turns it into a weapon against you.

When you give someone your trust, and he returns it to you broken.

And when you say:

"Do not do this, it hurts me."

Then he does it again.

Some wrongdoing leaves no trace on the body.

But it leaves something heavier in the soul.

Something that makes a person change without others noticing.

He becomes more silent.

More cautious.

Less trusting.

And he begins to review his words before he says them, and his feelings before he shares them, and his doors before he opens them to anyone.

Not because he is weak...

But because he learned that some doors, when you open them to those who do not deserve them, may take years before you can close them.

The First Wound

He thought the wound healed when it stopped bleeding.

Then he grew up...

And he discovered that there are wounds that do not bleed at all.

Wounds no doctor sees.

And no friends notice.

And they do not appear in pictures.

But they appear in a single moment, when a person hears a word that resembles the past, or passes by an old place, or remembers a face he thought he had forgotten.

Then the feelings return to him whole.

As if the years had not passed.

And here he understood something he had not known before:

Time does not erase everything.

Time sometimes does no more than teach us how to live while carrying what happened.

And for this, do not say to someone:

"Forget."

And you do not know how many times he tried.

Do not say to him:

"It is over."

For perhaps it ended for you, but for him it was the beginning of something long.

And perhaps the day you forgot was the day another person began to lose his trust in the world.

There was always one question that returned to him:

"Why did he do that?"

He was not looking for a justification.

He was looking for relief.

He wished to find a reason that would make what happened understandable, because the mind sometimes tires from things for which it finds no explanation.

He would say to himself:

"Perhaps he did not mean it."

"Perhaps he was angry."

"Perhaps he did not notice."

"Perhaps I was wrong."

Then the same question returns:

But why didn't he stop when he saw that I was hurting?

And this is the hardest part of wrongdoing...

That you hurt not only from what happened.

But you hurt because someone knew you were hurting and did not stop.

Some wounds do not hurt you because the one who wounded you was cruel,

but because they came from someone you thought would be the last person who could hurt you.

And as the days passed, the wronged person learned to be silent.

Not because he forgot.

But because he grew tired of explaining something no one can feel as he felt it.

Tired of saying:

"He hurt me."

Then he hears:

"Perhaps he did not mean it."

Tired of saying:

"I am no longer who I was."

Then he hears:

"You are too sensitive."

Until silence became more merciful than speech.

And so...

The story began.

Not with a great incident.

Nor with a death.

Nor with sudden news.

But with a small wound whose owner thought he would forget it.

But he did not forget.

And he did not know that this small wound would grow with him, and that the person who caused it would one day return to his life in a way he never expected...

Not alive this time.

But as news.

A single piece of news...

That will make him stand before everything he tried to escape from and ask himself for the first time:

"If news came to you that someone who wronged you has died... would you forgive him?"

And here the true story begins.