I decided last night that I want to talk about this.

Writing is great therapy, and I've realised I'm very, very angry and need to deal.

Forgiveness is a funny thing. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Someone told me once, that you've forgiven somebody if you can think about what they've done to you and you don't feel angry anymore. I suppose that makes sense. I'm not sure I truly understand the concept of forgiveness, or whether you can force yourself to do it, or how indeed to go about it.

I've done some pretty nasty things to people, in my time. It's rare that anything has happened to me that I have trouble letting go of. My sisters and I had our share of fights as kids, but it was nothing we couldn't get over. Once I left home I had few issues with my family. My mother took some understanding, but I don't feel angry at her.

There is one person in the world I am still angry at, and what he did is a year old now. I've been cheated on and I've been shoved around and I've been dumped nastily, but none of that bothered me like it did when my boyfriend of the time, in a desperate haze, forced himself on me. Oh how I love dancing around the world 'rape' because it simply doesn't feel like it; I always associated 'rape' with beanie-wearing shady characters in parks and outside liquor stores. I know an astonishing proportion of rape comes from somebody you already know, but I didn't know it would be like this.

I'm not scared of men or sex or intimacy. I'm not scared of anything like that. My life continued pretty much as normal after it happened, and I didn't really register any of it. Then, a few months later, suddenly I realised what had happened. That's when I got scared, and angry, and tearful. I was so confused. I just came home from work one day and said to my then-boyfriend, "that guy raped me a few months ago". It was very weird, that I realised so suddenly. It had never registered that he'd done anything wrong before, although I wasn't seeing him anymore.

So I decided not to go to the police because it was a complex situation and I honestly believed this guy would never do it again. Then I just tried to get over it, but it hasn't worked. I'm on a course of anti-depressants now, which do help. It helps being sober, and it helps to have the friends I do. But deep down I'm very angry and I know if I don't deal with it, it's going to escape in other ways.

So I've gotten to thinking about forgiveness. I've been given a lot of advice on this one: counselling, cut him off completely, move on, talk about it, forget about it, everything. All I want is progress. I want every day to make it easier, but at the moment it's not. I'm still just as angry as I was six months ago, and when I think about it I just want to kill him or scream at him or hit him very, very hard.

I've learned enough to know that forgiveness is the key to being free from this. If I don't forgive this person, what he did will always be in the background of everything I do and everything I become. I don't want that anymore. I want it completely erased from my life so I can stop hating. I don't wear hate well.

I don't think about it a lot. But when I'm reminded of it in whatever ways (I was with this guy for two years, so he permeates a good portion of my memories) it can render me pretty useless. I don't know. All I want to know is, where do I sign up. Because I want to get started, and I don't know how to do even that.