The Forgiven.




Eight years ago I made a mistake. I harmed someone. I broke a heart.

Some relationships are toxic and broken and present as steel boxes padlocked with kisses in size just-too-small. A key or a welding torch and a clean or jagged, skin-cutting break can be necessary.

So some break-ups are unavoidable. Some are required. But some – one –  are just stupid, a product of youth and optimism and an odd conviction that you can come back later, when you’re ready.

A friend once told me “you can’t put people in the freezer like leftover brownies and come back to them later.”

People and relationships don’t wait for you to be ready. Maybe you grow through relationships. Maybe relationships provide the context for challenging you to become a person ready for a relationship. Maybe we’re all fixer-uppers.

Maybe I was older then and I’m younger now. Now, my caution and my fears evaporate daily. Now I subscribe to (and make up) theories of bounce and and resilience and faith. Now I allow for mistakes. Now I embrace mistakes. Now I don’t have to get it right OR I WILL SURELY DIE. I’ve gotten it wrong so many times that wrong is a friend. We cuddle.

So now I don’t worry about relationships failing. It will be okay. I will be okay. A string of brief and broken relationships doesn’t mean that I’m bad at relationships – it means that I’m really, really good at getting out of relationships that don’t and won’t fit. Or stretch.

But this relationship was not that. This was it.

So I was wrong. I harmed someone and that harm was my shadow.

I’m wary of our culture’s addiction to addiction. I marvel at the way even those of us who aren’t in programs twelve-step our thoughts and our explanations. I’m even more skeptical about the universe as Santa Claus who rewards good little girls and boys who’ve read The Secret. I’m suspicious of absent apologies and doubt the necessity of forgiveness.

And yet. I was haunted. I did wrong. Somehow I needed to make it right, even though I couldn’t make it right. I kept thinking about making amends. I thought the earth required it in order to keep turning but really the target was my spinning soul.

Recovering alcoholics make amends. It is Step Nine:  housecleaning. Action. People in the program contacting those they’ve harmed and acknowledge the wrong and ask how to make it right. Step nine is a nag.

I tried. I called. I called. I called. I called once a month for ten months. I thought, maybe I should stop calling because I’m possibly re-victimizing this person when he is forced to hear my messages saying please call me when he clearly doesn’t want to call me.

And yet the goddamned universe is a tyrant. She made me do it.

I called one last time and left a rambly, unprepared voice mail about what I did and how wrong and undeserved it was and that I was sorry and in fact that I am so sorry that even eight years later, I’m still thinking about it.

I did not ask for forgiveness. I think asking for forgiveness is like asking for a cookie. It is not yours to request. When you are wrong, you offer. You don’t ask.

Yet I was forgiven, lovingly, surprisingly, unreservedly.

And I am lightened.

_____________________

this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:

On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1

A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2

Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3

How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4

The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5

It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *

*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it

November 29, 2009 | filed under: Love, Meaning, The Sorry Series

12 people have we need you too.

How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4




When I was twenty-one years old, I declined a monumental apology.

If everyday apologies – oops sorry, I bumped you with the cart, oops sorry I cut you off at the intersection, oops sorry I accidentally had sex with your room-mate – are pleasure crafts, this apology was a freighter. A tanker. A leaking oil tanker about to slick up some helpless sea-life and require flotillas of volunteers, enormous donations and teams of public relations professionals to clean up.

Not only did I refuse the apology, I declined to offer an audience to even hear the apology.

Yet in that decision there was no malice. There was no vengeance. There was nothing. I had been wronged as a child – sadly, habitually, sexually wronged – and now an apology was being offered to my adult self. And I didn’t need it. It was over. As a six year old, as an eight year old, as a ten year old, the only thing I needed from anyone was for someone to make it stop. But as an adult, I had made amends for myself, to myself, and I was fine. I was neutral. I needed nothing from my abuser: no apologies, no explanations, no reparations, no reconciliation. Nothing.

I didn’t need the apology, I didn’t need vengeance, or justice, and I didn’t need to offer forgiveness. Not even for myself.

Forgiveness is a slippery fish. There exists the idea that forgiveness can be offered, like a plate of cookies, or maybe a shot of penicillin, or a priestly palm to the forehead, to cure what ails you. There exists the idea that granting someone forgiveness can help you to release your pain and cure yourself: that forgiveness is, possibly, a selfish act of self-care.

I’ve wondered about that, this week. I thought about apologies that I’ve received and grudgingly accepted, which is not acceptance at all, and apologies I’ve greeted with a tongue-lashing. I wondered about the right way to apologize, to hear an apology, to receive an apology, to accept an apology. I wanted a formula for achieving authentic graciousness, accountability and magnanimity.

I have been struggling to remember a formula I forgot that I knew by heart when I was twenty-one.

Maybe there is grace in refusing to engage in an awkward social show that, deep-down, you don’t require. Maybe it is generous to return the gift to the giver and say:

here.
here is the harm you granted me.
it is for you to intimate and decipher.
the only relationship to be decoded and repaired is yours with your actions.
the pain has passed.
it is nothing to me.

Maybe forgiveness is not mine to give. Maybe asking it of me, at all, is asking me to right your wrongs. Maybe forgiveness is a journey you take, yourself, with yourself. Maybe that is the only path that leads to peace. Maybe what I offer – the nothingness, the absence of any need to inquire, to understand, or to accept – is the meaning of magnanimous, itself.

______________

one of apologies I was waiting for should have been from the Very Bad Lying Man, but this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:

On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1

A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2

Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3

How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4

The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5

It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *

*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it

September 9, 2009 | filed under: How To, Love, Meaning, Power, Purpose, Sex, The Sorry Series, Very Bad Lying Man

12 people have we need you too.

Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3




This week I’m obsessing about forgiveness, being sorry, and sorry ways to be sorry. Josh Hanagarne of the wildly weird and wonderful World’s Strongest Librarian has some ideas about that too.
Here’s his guest post about lame apologies – and the very first guest post on my site, ever. Thanks, Josh.

Three Lame Types Of Apologies by Josh Hanagarne

The Screamed Apology

I was outside a Wal-Mart recently when I saw a woman in pajamas dragging her shirtless child across the parking lot. She was pulling him too fast and he couldn’t keep up. He fell and skinned his knees and elbows.

She tried to pick him up but he didn’t want her help. He had fallen down, she has caused it, and he was calling her out by going limp and unresponsive.


It was awesome. Give her hell! I thought.


The more the child resisted, the harder she tried to lift him to his feet. He did that delicious dead weight thing that children and protestors do when they get particularly fussy. I watched her struggle as he poured himself over and around her arms.

I started laughing from my perch near the cart return.

She was revving at a very high RPM. Then she erupted: “I’m sorry, all right!” I swear the lights in the building flickered, she screamed so loud. “I’m sorry!”


I don’t want to have apologies shouted at me, especially if you’re wearing pajamas in public.

The Serial Apologizer

I spend my days among people who never apologize for the things they should, but insist on apologizing for everything else.

This is the sound of me handing someone their library book: “Here you go, thanks for coming in.”


“Thank you, Josh. Sorry.”


Or:


“Hi! Can I help you?”


“Yes…sorry.”


The strangest example I ever saw of this was a waitress in Moab, Utah. I was eating at La Hacienda with my family. The restaurant was really busy. We expected to wait for a while after being seated and were all fine with that.

When our waitress showed up, she poured waters for us. “Here’s some water, sorry,” she said, although she was well ahead of schedule.

“You’re doing great,” we said. “We’re just hanging out tonight. Take your time.”


“Okay, cool,” she said. “Sorry.”

She apologized for bringing the delicious appetizers. She apologized for refilling our drinks. She apologized for deserving a huge tip and she apologized for helping us have such an enjoyable evening in the restaurant.


She was wonderful, obviously, but wow—that woman could apologize. It was like a tic. The more I pay attention, the more people I realize have this strange disorder.


I don’t get it.

The Apology You Don’t Have The Right To Give

There are things you can’t apologize for. Most of the people who commit the sorts of deeds that you can’t apologize for refuse to quit trying.


I’ve seen a lot of abuse. I once drove to Elko, Nevada in a panic because my sister’s new husband had been abusing her so badly that…

It’s a four-hour drive. I cried for three and a half. Then I got so furious I had to pull over until the shakes stopped. I had no idea what I’d do when I got there. I wondered if I’d be a murderer by sunrise.


He wasn’t there and I never saw him again. I’m glad. I drove my sister back to my house in Salt Lake City. The next day when he called her phone, I answered it and asked what he wanted.


He wanted the DVDs he had left in their apartment back in Elko. He had the entire Wayans Brothers collection and the separation was already killing him. I said that I’d return them in three weeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a whining voice.


“I don’t care. I have to hang up. I feel sick.”


“I said I’m sorry…”


There have been times in my life when nothing has meant more than a sincere apology. A sincere apology at the right time can bring me to my knees and rebuild every burnt bridge in history.

There have been times in my life when nothing has meant less to me than an apology for the sake of convenience. Particularly if it’s on behalf of the Wayans Brothers.

Let’s hear it, then. What did I miss? Have you ever given or received a lame apology? I’ve certainly doled out my share, lest my above examples give you the impression that I’m squeaky clean.

I’m squeaky stupid, but that’s a story for another day.

About the Author: Josh Hanagarne writes World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog with advice about coping with Tourette’s Syndrome, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and so much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates and Stronger, Smarter, Better Newsletter to stay in touch.

_______________

this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:

On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1

A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2

Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3

How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4

The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5

It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *

*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it

September 8, 2009 | filed under: Meaning, Purpose, The Sorry Series

18 people have we need you too.

A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2




Apologies are on my mind. I’m due an apology; I owe several apologies from my flaky days and I’m trying to summon the courage to offer them; and I’m pretty much convinced that Chris Brown is the worst apologizer, ever. Or at least he’s the most sorry sorry-giver in the last 14 days.

Apologies are actually simple. I know this from my children. When they have done wrong – when one sister has snatched a barbie or a precious book; looked at the other one too many times or for too long; when one’s leg has been brushed during dinner; when harsh words have been uttered, like the ever offensive “I don’t want to play with you, I need privacy”; or when life has gone sideways and naps have been missed and it is all too much and hysteria ensues – they know how to set things right.

Here is the child’s guide to apologizing:

1. Take time to yourself. Sometimes this is dictated from on-high (ie your mother sends you to your room to Think About What You’ve Done). Sometimes it is voluntary and involves flouncing and a ritual slamming of the bedroom door. Often it involves sobbing yourself to sleep. Ceilings must be contemplated. The answers must be assembled, the grief must be felt, and the need not to be alone and away from those you love must be acute.

2. When you have the answers – why you did what you did, how awful it must have been to have received those bad actions, why/how you will not do this again, and what you propose to do to make amends – venture out of your cave/princess lair/self-imposed isolation and say this: I’m so sorry.

3. Mean it. Don’t justify. Take whatever comes. Accept it. Be explicit. Say exactly what you did, with no pretty, vague words. Say you’re sorry. Repeat it. Say it again. Explain #2, in detail.

4. Repeat it again. (Yes, I realize that I am repeating the steps. That is the point. You must repeat it until it doesn’t need to be repeated.) Really, truly mean it. FYI: meaning it means that you have resolved NOT to do it again. Ever. Not only if it is convenient, if the stars and the planet and the moons and the green traffic lights align, and if you’re so inclined, and you hope said temptation will just go away, forever. If you’re sorry, wild dogs would have to be chasing you naked through a dark forest for you to fall in that same trap again. You’re only truly sorry if you never, ever want to do what you did again.

5. Offer reparations. Every child – and parent – knows that hugs and kisses and stroking of tear-stained cheeks are the most valuable compensation you can offer.

This is how not to apologize:

1. Shift the blame to the other person. Say “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

2. Apologize with an agenda to serve yourself. Apologize to save face. Apologize to accrue the social benefits of the apology, without really assuming the responsibilities and the humbling that apologies require. See either of Chris Brown’s rote apologies.

3. Talk around the offense you committed. Call it “it”, “what I did”, but don’t be explicit about the harm you caused. See Chris Brown’s apologies. [Definitely do NOT say "I'm so sorry I punched and slapped and bit and beat my girlfriend until she was bruised and bleeding while threatenting to kill her". No, say, "I wish I could have handled the situation better." Because that's authentic.]

4. Get frustrated when your apology isn’t yielding the reaction you demand. Say “I TOLD you I’m SORRY.” Preferably as loudly as possible. See Chris Brown’s apology: “I TOLD Rihanna, over and over again, that I’m sorry.”

5. Keep apologizing for the same thing. Meaning: keep doing what you want, and use “I’m sorry” as your get-out-of-jail-free card.

6. Be insincere. Say you’re sorry with your words and “hahahahaha sucker” with your actions. See Chris Brown’s new $300,000 necklace, below. OOPS.

_________________

this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:

On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1

A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2

Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3

How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4

The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5

It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *

*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it

September 7, 2009 | filed under: How To, Love, Meaning, People, Power, Purpose, The Sorry Series

7 people have we need you too.

On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1




When I was eight or nine, my mother grievously injured my fragile soul.

She may have asked me to clean my room. Possibly she made me put down my Nancy Drew to wash dishes. In all likelihood, she gave me grief for sassing her.

[Note to self: there is a lesson here. This dynamic - my unrepentant, inevitable and perennial backtalk and my mother's attempt to curb it - was the mainstay of our relationship, I believe, and a lesson in the frustration and futility of attempting to alter another's temperament and inclination.

Her efforts to de-sassify me were for naught.

This is why parenting sucks. We're supposed to shape and smooth and socialize small wild animals with pointy teeth and even more pointed wills and we're supposed to enjoy it.]

[Note to self's note: The sins you commit are the sins you will suffer. My mother endured snide comments and outright challenge from me from the time I spoke my first word to the the time I moved out. I now know her delicious pain. I'm three years into it. Her name is Lola.]

[Note to my dearerst of dear readers: If you really love me, you will babysit the little political one. The one who, when the choice to behave or not behave and the attendant consequences are outlined to her, tells me: "No, that's YOUR choice. I'M taking the power."]

Whatever happened, what ultimately happened was that I was banished to my room where I cried hot, insulted, evidently wholly unloved tears into my frilly pillow. I cried myself through the afternoon and into a sweaty sleep.

When I awoke, my questioning heart was heavy and needed answers and as every slighted child knows, the best replies are found in the heavens, or at least the ceiling, or if you’re the girliest of girls, in the ruffled canopy that arches over your bed. So I did that.

I contemplated the injustice inscribed in winding lines of flowering vines on the fabric of my bed’s canopy – the bed I had received for my birthday after earmarking years of editions of the Sears catalogue. I wanted a pink canopy bed but I received a burgandy one. Clearly That Woman hated me.

And I needed her to love me, more than ever, because she was mad at me. Because she hurt me. Because I knew then, and I know now, that the one who makes the cut should bind the wound.

If I am a nectarine – and I am – then this bit of knowledge is the pit that I carry. Hard, inedible, necessary, generative.

Je m’excuse. I am sorry. The words don’t matter but the hunger must be fed.

My children know this, too. When I have wounded them, and exiled them to their rooms to contemplate their ceilings – and they are even more oppressed than I was, as they lack canopied beds – their hearts break loudly open.

They protest. They protest me. They grieve their pain. They blame me for their wounds. And when the protesting and sobbing subsides, they need me to kiss them and their boo-boos better.

This is what I remembered, this weekend, when life was an archer and launched arrows of outraged misfortune at me and forced me to contemplate my own ceiling. Meditating on the intricacies of the fifth wall yielded these conclusions:

  1. The developer who built this house had the good sense not to spray texture on the ceilings of the first two levels of the house, but somehow that sense departed him on the third story. This is unfortunate.  Textured ceilings are a crime against design.
  2. Life doesn’t have very good aim because no actual organs – including my heart – were irreparably harmed in the making of this misfortune. But pride has poor circulation and bruises vividly. It is almost satisfying to behold.
  3. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is woefully incomplete and should be updated, preferably by me. I’ve mentioned this before.
  4. Aggrieved souls need apologies.

So, yes, dearest perceptive readers, someone hurt my feelings, and hurt my feelings in a way that was almost masterly: I endured – oh the agony, oh the woe, oh oh oh – a snub that was successful, effective, essential, repetitive, and, I think, remorseless.

Still, despite my suspicion that the villain in this story is not sorry and never will be, I crave a conversation, an explanation, an apology.

Apologies are magic. They are the play button when a relationship has been paused. Interrupted. Broken. An apology can bridge that distance, span that cleavage, heal that break, and start that song, again.

But only when they are real. And offered. And neither of these words captured the absence dancing across my ceiling.

So what to do with my truth, my stone fruit, that only the person who harms you can heal you?

_________________

this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:

On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1

A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2

Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3

How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4

The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5

It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *

*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it

September 2, 2009 | filed under: Family, Love, Meaning, Purpose, The Sorry Series, Very Bad Lying Man

16 people have we need you too.