You're the only person you have to live with the rest of your life
In one camp there are the people who will never forgive. "Those *fill in expletive* don't deserve my forgiveness", people. The ones who every time a name is mentioned, even if it's not the actual person, just the name in common, this one gets a knot in their stomach. This one has been hurt so badly they will never forget, and never give anyone else a chance to hurt them like that either. They will take that pain to the grave, and to whatever afterlife may come.
I don't see trauma in that way. I certainly don't see bad things that happen to me as a reflection of me at all. I didn't cause my parents to divorce, or my brother to leave, or my son's father to do drugs, or my parents to die. These are things that other people have done that affect me but does in no way embody me. I am who I am despite all of these things happening around me and to me. I am who I am because of all of the things that happen around me and to me. It doesn't do anyone any good to create a persona of trauma and hold onto it so tightly that it drowns you.
Then he asked me why I accepted his request after all of this time, and the truth is that I needed to. I needed to forgive him not for his sake but for my own. I needed to forgive myself for all the time I wasted being angry. I needed to talk to him again to see that he wasn't the devil, but just some guy with just as much damage and confusion in his life as we all have. I had to take my power back.