Love Means Never Saying "I'm Sorry"

Of all the Hallmark card sayings, the empty expressions, the meaningless phrases I’ve ever heard, this one is probably the biggest crock.

My husband and I have been together for almost a decade.  I say I’m sorry all the time!  I am constantly making mistakes; contrary to popular belief, I am not, in fact, perfect.  I mess up, I apologize, and I try to learn from my errors.  I am also a mother of a toddler who watches everything I do now, so I am trying to be a role model.  I want the people who are brave enough to love me, and those who do not really have a choice, to want to be around me, to continue to love me.  So I humble myself, I think about what I’ve done, I apologize, and I hope to fix it, make it up, heal the wounds I have caused.

I have not always been this way.  I used to throw plates, and cut with my words.  When I was much younger, I would use my extensive vocabulary and skill with language to make people feel low, to hurt as deeply as I could.  Why?  Because I was wounded myself, I suppose, and misery loves company.  I have looked back on the damage I have caused, at the casualties I have left behind, and I feel sorry.  I have regrets, and for the people still in my life, strong enough to have stuck it out, I hope I have apologized enough, in enough ways, to move forward without looking back.  For those no longer in my life, I hope the hurt I have brought has not led to further hurting.

I am sorry.  I do have regrets.  Another ridiculous expression:  “Live life with no regrets.”

Really?  If you could go back and accidentally hit that person with your car, you would do it all again?  If you could ignore your children while you catered to your own selfish needs, you would still sit watching that program on television while your daughter begged you to have a tea party with her, still do those drugs, still push those babies away?  You wouldn’t fight harder to go to college?  Pay more attention in class?  Hold your loved ones closer?  Tell them you love them more often?  Say I’m sorry quicker?

I would. 

But we cannot go back.  What we can do is move forward, acknowledging our mistakes, and trying to make them better.  We can hold our loved ones now.  Tell them we love them now.  And say we’re sorry when we hurt them.  For we will hurt them, no matter how hard we try not to. 

I swear it seems like as soon as I learn from one mistake, I make a new one.

And there is a clear difference between the “yea yea, I’m sorry” that you give a sibling or friend when you are younger and your parents make you apologize (or when you are older and you still act like you are younger), and the genuine regret you show when you actually feel it.

We all know the difference, both the givers and the receivers, so the false apologizers know what they’re doing when they say “what? I said I was sorry.”  Or worse, “well, I don’t always want to be saying I’m sorry, because I know I’m going to mess up again, and it’s going to start sounding meaningless.”

What?  No.  You say you’re sorry when you mess up.  Period.

Unless you are not, in fact, sorry.

In which case, I am.