The Apologies I Never Got
How I Learned to Write My Own Apologies
We’ve all got them. Those lingering apologies. You know, the ones we never got…
Whether it’s from a romantic partner, a parent, a spouse, a friend, a boss, a coworker, we’ve all got those apologies we know we deserve but are yet to see. We begin to wonder if we will ever get them, and if we never get them, how can we begin to move on? How can we possibly heal without an apology?
That’s exactly how I used to think…until one day I stopped. I looked around at my life so cluttered with ungiven apologies and resentments, that I could barely breathe, let alone have anything new enter my life. And that’s how it all began…I knew there had to be a better way.
My Story
I grew up in a family that had a lot going on. From mental health issues to addictions, unhealed childhood trauma, you name it, my family had it. All neatly concealed underneath a blanket of money and a profession, that shielded what we were experiencing, from the rest of the world. My father was an attorney in a very small town, which basically made him small-town royalty. But underneath that successful exterior, was a person who could barely hold it together, and the people who suffered that were his children.
Between rages that never seemed to end, a daily helping of blame and guilt and unfounded accusations at the drop of a hat, living in that home was no picnic. Follow that up with a nasty divorce of my parents and me being unceremoniously booted from my home immediately following my high school graduation, and it was a lot to process.
And that truly is only a small part of the pain I experienced from my family and upbringing. There was so much more.
So off I went out into the world, to act out my trauma on every relationship I had. But it wasn’t my fault, right? It was my horrible parents, my terrible siblings, my awful bosses, coworkers, boyfriends, friends and on and on and on. And yes, some of those people truly did do terrible things.
But my own shortcomings and behavior…were mine. My responsibility.
The way I treated friends who were just trying to help…mine. The way I allowed boyfriends to treat me badly then blamed them for my lack of boundaries…mine. The way I took out my trauma on everyone around me…mine.
I had to stop running and start thinking. Is this the life I wanted? Were all these ruined relationships, loneliness, and anger what I wanted for myself? No. Please no. Definitely no. So I did something about it. I took responsibility.
Healing is our responsibility, no one else can do it for us. Self-work is an inside job, and the only one with the right qualifications for that job is us. So I got to work. On myself.
A New Way
That’s when I began writing. I wrote them all down. All the apologies I never got, from the people who never gave them to me.
And I found that I was free. I could heal without their lame apology. And yes, a lot of what happened to me were things I could not control, but how I responded to them and healed from them, were.
So I chose a higher path. I chose a better way. I wrote down the apologies I never got, and I let them go. I let go of all the pain I felt and I started working my way towards forgiveness. As hard as some of it was and can still be, (forgiveness is a daily practice) my life has changed immeasurably since I started this journey. I can let go of the pains of my past, without taking them out on my future.
And so can you. We deserve to live a great life, we have probably already suffered enough. So why let that person or multiple people destroy our lives any further? Because ultimately that is all anger and resentment do is hold us back.
We can give ourselves the apology we never got from them and move on. No lame apology from an even lamer ex, necessary.
For more of my work on this, check out my website www.apologiesinevergot.com or the Instagram @apologiesinevergot
