Straight Up
No one is living in the past when they are taking the lessons with them and understanding that not everyone can be with you in the future, you can love them deeply, but that doesn't mean that the bond was healthy or that you have mental space to rebuild every single bond either.
It's also important to mention that forgiveness does not mean that you have to rebuild or reconcile, or that you're at a place in your life where you even have the headspace. It shouldn't cost you the conditions to your mental health.
Life is too short to waste your time. Believe who they are when they show you the first time. Wish them well, but don't allow just anyone back in, especially those who sweep everything under the rug (incapable of honest discussions as to why a rupture occurred in the first place and so dogmatic that they can't co-exist with gray areas).
You protect your time by prescreening things, you protect your peace by vetting who is trying to get into your life to drain your energy, you protect what you're building by not allowing just anybody back in. You worked way too hard to get rid of constraining and false beliefs.
The people who believe that striving for more in life takes you away from them are often the same ones who feel it's acceptable to hold you back without offering any support and also hindering what you've built while providing for yourself and faulting you for needing that time protected since you want more for yourself, which is absurd. It simply doesn't make sense.
Life is too short to let your past ruin your future or to be dragged down by the wrong people.
Life is too short to be belittled, controlled, and walked on by control freaks masquerading as sweet when their love was laced with put-downs and conditions aka follow their values or be treated differently. No thank you.
Life is too short for people who don't have mental flexibility or similar values to you and do not actually respect your personal agency and autonomy. Life is too short for people who belittle your ambitions. Life is too short for people who make difficult periods of your life more difficult. Life is too short for people who shove their values down your throat even if your lived experience is different and doesn't fit a religious box.
You shouldn't have to explain who you are in detail because those who are meant to be in your life should get you effortlessly. All else is a drain of energy.
Choosing the order of priorities in your unique life and "phase" in life isn't exploiting, undermining, or controlling another person. This is respecting YOU. I like some Biblical stories, but I mix it with Spirituality as life has many gray areas and doesn't fit into a box.
Those who are right for you don't stifle your freedom to be your authentic self and try to force you into the version of you that's convenient for them or confuse respecting them with complying to their orders for your life values and choices, there's a fence around autonomy.
Living the way you want, without harming or disturbing others, is not selfish. Truly selfish individuals are those who try to impose their morals and values on others, dictate how others should live, and unnecessarily restrict their freedom.
You don't need to gain something tangible from every connection, but at the very least, your values should align. That's the absolute minimum—otherwise, what's the point?
Not everyone has the same values and boundaries and priorities... I am not going to have anybody run up in my life just because they did something nice for me and tell me what to prioritize in my life when our life experience is entirely different. I'm also not going to run myself into the ground to please people when they're not the ones providing for me and making sure that I have financial safety for self-reliance in my life. If they don't pay my bills, they don't get to tell me what to prioritize in life.
Life is too short to lack the peace you worked hard to build after thousands spent on healing. And forgiveness is not always reconciliation.