TASK 44: I’M SORRY
“A clear conscience is often a sign of a bad memory”. Unknown
Brothers, …
All my regrets involve shame. I am ashamed of some of the shit I done in my life to myself and I am very ashamed of some of the shit I did to others.
I have regrets. Regrets so regretful it is hard for me to think about them. And I can’t get rid of them. They sit in the silent corners of my psyche, hidden in shadow but always there, grim reminders of the tremendous mistakes I have made in my life.
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I have been incredibly stupid, thoughtless, hurtful and vicious. And more than often than not my cruel acts were done with malice and forethought. In other words, I did them deliberately. And the victims of my cruelty run the gamut from complete strangers to the people I love.
I thought that if I dredged them up, one by one, and replayed them, I could forgive myself. So that’s what I did. One by one I revisited my regrettable acts…the infidelities, the cruel lies, the vicious acts of betrayals…
It wasn’t fun. It sucked. The worse one involved my mother. I got out of college and ran away from my past like an escaped convict–I wanted another life, and I stopped talking to my mother unless it was her birthday and only went to see her if it was absolutely necessary, and when I did visit I would usually cut the trip short so I could get back to my life, only to pick up the phone one day and hear my brother say, “mom’s been hit by a car”…how do you apologize when they’re gone?
You can’t. But I tried. I wrote her a letter and apologized to her for being such a poor son.
I wrote them all down. One after another. Some, it turns out, were pretty minor–even funny. Some weren’t funny but I could forgive myself. Some, like the thing with my mom, were unforgivable. The ones that involved family and friends, I apologized to them, although I found, as you might, that apologies don’t necessarily smooth everything over.
But nevertheless…
TASK: You know what you have to do.
Photo courtesy of the author.