The take-away about forgiveness I carry is that doing wrong things has a life-long burden. No amount of self-forgiveness can rid you of the burden of remembering you did a thing you have strong negative emotions about. If you did a stupid thing to yourself its a 'virtuous circle' but when you do it to somebody else (and, I did) then you carry a burden of your impact into another autonomous entitie's life.

I really regret what I did to them, and I regret what it did to me too.

No amount of forgiveness on their part will end this burden.