Forgiveness

Around 3 years ago I first came out to one of my friends, whom I shall keep nameless, and after a while he started to make jokes at my expense about my sexuality to the point where it made a rift between us. In an attempt to sort this I explained the problem to him and after a while he started to send hurtful messages to me online. After this point all contact ceased and we never spoke.
Today when I went onto my Xbox I saw I had 3 unread messages and they were from him. The basic message of them was one of apology and a want, I believe, to be friends again. It caught me off guard, to be honest, and it set me on a spiral of thought about the situation.
With the amazing gift of hindsight I'm able to see now that back then the concept and reality of me being gay were two different things. In my head it was easy to accept and for everyone else it was easy to accept. The reality of it was different though. There was a certain learning curve to living with the scenarios and things it brought and at first it was difficult for me and when I thought on it I realised that it must've been difficult for him as well.
For me I had to learn to become comfortable with this new part of myself and that meant it was hard to talk about and hard to joke about. For him, because I was probably one of the only gay people he knew at the time and we were quite close friends... it was probably a shock for him and lead him to question things about our friendship. I'm not saying he was right or wrong to think that, if he did in fact think that, but I believe it was more natural than conscious. For that I can't blame him, it's just the society that we live in that brings about those thoughts, as I implied in my previous post.
After a long thing about the situation I felt I had to reply to him. To come back to something after 3 years and apologise would've taken a lot of courage to do and it's the time factor, I suppose, that leads me to believe that he's genuine in what he says. We'd gone 3 years without speaking so what would he have to gain from contacting me? Not much, if anything at all. So I typed out a reply to him that spanned 3 messages (it's very laborious typing over Xbox Live) to say to him that I was glad he apologised because it meant a lot and that, given how long ago it happened, we've both developed as people since that and become better people. Ultimately I ended on the point that I would like to be friends with him again. Some of you might think I was silly to do that, but I have a reason for it.
In the past I've been in positions where I've messed up something with a person, realised my mistake and was denied any chance to try things again despite having the knowledge to do it better a second time. Recalling those feelings of frustration and unfulfillment, I felt very strongly that I couldn't deny him the chance to make things better when he seems to genuinely be sorry. I've not got a clue where things may end up in this, but I firmly believe that people should be given a second chance if they're genuinely sorry for what they did.

Despite what I've just stated above though, I drew the conclusion that forgiveness is a tricky thing. Every situation where the issue of it is raised is different and the tolerance of forgiveness is different in each person depending on their experiences, nature and mood. As much as people might try to put rules on forgiveness, like I've tried to - to forgive a person in such-and-such a circumstance - forgiveness is not something that can be defined by rules. It's a state of mind and emotion that indicates that a person has worked through all the issues relating to a problem and that they can truly let go of it. It makes sense then why some situations are harder to forgive than others. If someone breaks a vase you may forgive them after 10 minutes but if someone breaks your heart you may take years to get over it. It's not to do with the sentimental value of something, but more the emotional hurt of the whole thing and how long it takes your mind to get over it and once you're truly ready to forgive someone, you'll know.

That's probably the best thing about forgiveness that I've learnt: You can do it the second you're ready.

-Aiden