That person has died, and, by letting go of that image and allowing ourselves to be who we are today, we can experience forgiveness. The way to understand guilt is not to ignore or repress it but to open it up beyond its content and relationship to time. Since our past actions cannot be changed, to dwell again and again on what we did wrong keeps us imprisoned within immutable time. Struggling in this way only reinforces our bondage. It is another form of self-abuse.
Imperfect actions are an indication of our humanness.
Very few actions we take are totally pure in attitude and response. To acknowledge that as a human being most of our responses are incomplete and partial is to admit that our growth is unfinished. We have been placed on this earth to grow in an open-ended way, not to be pure. When we are forgiving, we attempt to forgive those who wrong us for the specific harm they have caused. But incidents of wrongdoing can never be made right.