Forgiveness (trigger warning sa)

I’ve been grappling the concept of forgiveness. I understand forgiveness. I’ve been working on the forgiveness exercises and I’m kinda getting upset about it and stuck. It’s asking for times I’ve been forgiven for things and how I felt and what it was that I did. The thing is though that the things I did were mistakes and it was not my intentions. How can you forgive someone who did not make a mistake and it was their intention and they feel no ounce of shame or guilt or regret or remorse. How do you forgive that? And I understand the forgiveness is for me not them. That’s why I’m working on this. I feel stuck here though. Has anyone been able to forgive their ***/abuser? Do you have any advice?

In the exercise it explained a story of a holocaust survivor who later saw the man responsible for millions of deaths and when he saw him he was overcome by emotions not out of anger but because he felt as though he was the same as him and equally as capable of doing that. Though the thing is that he didn’t do that. As humans we are all technically capable of doing awful things. Though we choose not to. We make the conscious choice not to. So they are not at all the same as one CHOSE evil while the other didn’t. Evil tries to infiltrate us all and it’s our job to choose different.

In the exercise it also asked me reasons I would feel sorry for them. And I don’t. They live their life normally (the case went to court and ruled in my favor though all he got was therapy. I almost died that night and was left unconscious on the side of a road) they come from an extremely wealthy family and are wealthy themselves. People like that can get away with anything. I don’t feel sorry for him. The only possible reason I would feel sorry for him is that he will never experience genuine connection love care empathy or compassion. But then again that’s HIS choice why would I feel sorry about that? The only reason I would forgive him is to rid myself of sorrow not him.

I’m feeling very stuck and angry/triggered. This has haunted me for years and severely severely impacted my life I need to move on. But I don’t know how. I was watching a documentary about a girl who was raped and murdered and her family forgave the man and the documentary made me so extremely beyond angry. I couldn’t at all understand why they would do that. At the end there was this quote by Maya Angelo saying “the best thing you can do for yourself is forgive. Forgive everyone” and it sent me down an entire spiral. I looked my *** up on the internet. I don’t know why I did that to myself. I saw he has made all of these accomplishments doing cancer research and all these things which are suppose to be good which made me feel confused and feel like what happened to me was not even real. And I felt scared and angry. Though I started to understand what the point in forgiveness would be because I don’t deserve to feel scared and angry and let him take anymore power or thought away from me ever again. I just am really struggling on getting there.