“I am forgiven”

“I am forgiven” names a self-forgiveness practice Sugar arrives at years after she stopped stealing. The phrase first takes shape beside a river, where she gives particular stolen objects a physical stand-in and watches them drift away; later, she describes forgiveness not as a settled state but as work that must be repeated until it changes the story one tells about oneself.

The Phrase in the River Ritual

Sitting alone by a river, Sugar thinks through the things she had taken. Without planning the gesture, she picks a blade of grass for each one and drops it into the water. As each blade goes, she thinks, “I am forgiven.” The objects are specific: blue eye shadow, fancy soaps, a dog figurine, and a pretty sweater. The grass turns an inward reckoning into a sequence of small, visible acts, while the current carries each stand-in downstream.

The ritual gathers its force through repetition. Sugar says the phrase for each item, continuing until she has let the things she took float away and spoken the words so many times that they feel true. Forgiveness here is neither a denial that the acts happened nor a single sudden absolution. It is something enacted, one remembered object and one blade of grass at a time.

Forgiveness as Ongoing Practice

Sugar immediately qualifies the apparent resolution: the river ritual did not prevent her from grappling with the past again. She contrasts forgiveness with something effortless and attractive, then recasts it as strenuous labor: “Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up the hill.” The image makes recurrence part of the idea rather than evidence that the ritual failed. The phrase must be said again and again because self-forgiveness does not simply remain in place once achieved.

The repetition has a purpose beyond easing a moment of shame. Sugar says the words must be repeated until they become the story one believes about oneself. Forgiveness is thus represented as a practice of changing self-understanding over time: the remembered wrongdoing remains part of the past, but it need not remain the only account of the person who committed it.

Narrative and Self-Understanding

The phrase answers the difficulty of incorporating past theft into a coherent sense of self. In the surrounding account, Sugar acknowledges that stealing conflicts with the person she wants others to perceive her as being, then insists that it is also part of who she is and that she has forgiven herself. The river scene gives that tension a form: rather than erase the past, it names the acts, assigns each a token, and releases the tokens one by one.

Addressing Desperate, Sugar presents this repeated self-forgiveness as something she hopes the reader will also undertake. “I am forgiven” therefore works both as a personal declaration and as advice offered through the memoir’s direct address. Its significance lies not in making the past disappear, but in making room for a different, livable story about the self.