Say you're sorry

One thing I brought to therapy was my struggle to apologize to people that I care about for doing something shitty. I wanted to tell my sister I was sorry for something I said, but the thought of doing so brought me so much discomfort. I wanted to explore why, especially considering I've said sorry to her many times before. It didn't take long for me to come to a plausible explanation.

My sister had the unfortunate position of being the younger sibling to someone with ADHD, undiagnosed until I was eight. I was impulsive, I did a lot of stupid things and a lot of times it got her physically hurt. I remember playing rough with her and my mom warning us, "one of you always gets hurt, and it's always your sister." She was correct, and when my sister did inevitably get hurt, my mom would sternly say to me, "say you're sorry." And I would.

Sorry was one of the "magic words," like "please" and "thank you." Just say those words and everything's better. Maybe my sister's face was still drenched in tears, but now that I've said I'm sorry we can all move on. This was my understanding of apologizing for far too long.

It wasn't until I began to perceive more frequent injustices in how my parents treated me that I realized that sorry is just a word, and one could say it without actually being sorry. On more than one occasion, I found myself wondering, if you were actually sorry, why did an apology take this long? Why did you only resort to saying sorry once all your other options didn't work out? This line of thinking led me to reject apologies. These situations I intend to write about another day.

It was easy to say sorry as a kid. It was just a word. One that was said routinely after having done wrong. It was easy because I didn't have to be sincere. I didn't have to convince my sister that I was actually sorry or that it wouldn't happen again. And I wouldn't have to actually change my behavior at all. Back then I had unlimited second chances and forgiveness was guaranteed.

As an adult, it doesn't work like that at all. My sister has a choice to not be in my life or to establish boundaries. I have to be vulnerable and honest, admit that I made a mistake. As an autonomous being, she can decide whether she accepts the apology or not. Based partly on whether she's willing to believe that I will try not to do it again. I have to hold up my end of the bargain and make a sincere attempt to hold myself accountable and do better.

I imagine this is common sense to a lot of people, but it wasn't to me. And the reason is something I alluded to earlier: I don't think my parents know how to apologize. I think that, to this very day, my mom's understanding of an apology is not too different from my interpretation as a kid.

A lot of times she would even invalidate her own apology as she was making it. "I'm sorry, but" was a frequent prefix to the excuses that absolved her of any responsibility. A common example was "I'm sorry, but being a parent doesn't come with a manual."

I hoped that when I refused to accept her apologies, she'd reflect and try to understand why. She did not. In fact, it was a total mystery to her. Which eventually led to me going no-contact.