Cafe Hitch-hike

2022-01-26

Apologies: In the Thick of Them

I will always accept their apology because I know the space where the person was when they did it, but that 'space' was not easily constructed. Drops of confessions from difficult conversations, or little details I teased out from benign talks over the years gave me a more complete picture.

Some of these details made no sense at first, and I had to get something else to connect them before they made better sense. Sometimes a detail seemed insubstantial until I got something else to give it more flesh.

Sometimes I discovered a person acted out of a very terrible place or space. When things clicked or I got a full picture in these instances, I needed the ears, shoulders, and hearts of kind souls who listened to me cry or tell them what I learned. These people were able to be strong for me when I felt weak and in a couple of instances, destroyed. I would be in far worse shape without these people and am so grateful they were in my life. Sometimes I had to stay cold silent with what I learned, and years later those fucking knowings sprang out because they had to.

I think their apology is not quite complete. They still blamed me for some things. They disputed me on other details I brought up, but they never anticipated that I remembered certain things or how I understood them. They halted their dispute of some details when I tossed in some that were objective or known by people who only could be there.

They also have their own interpretations on some details related to the apology. If it's something that doesn't deny or negate the main reason or point of the apology, it's something I'd have to accept.

Knowing the story behind an awful act doesn't make what a person did right. I suppose it makes it more possible to forgive to see the state they were in when they did something, and to see their own woundedness or flaws. However, it's not that I think the one who made the apology needs to be punished. There's so much more, it seems, that has to happen before an apology can be fully accepted. Maybe an apology cannot be granted that way, but in pieces. I don't know.

I guess last night's conversations and the words I wrote afterward point out that forgiveness and apologies are not neat. They can be messy, complicated, and painful. I am in familiar ground, it's a weird netherworld one's in after they learn something and get an apology. It's like, 'what now?'

Maybe this is something similar to grief or it's the same thing: thinking and processing a loss and trying to scramble to put things back into the empty space that came with the loss. Maybe grief is a part of apologies for both sides. Maybe this is what leads to a different understanding and perhaps healing (complicated, difficult, or easy).

I don't know, but I suppose I will see. This is the most complicated apology I've ever seen a person close to me give. I may be the first person to get an apology; they said they want to apologize for others. I don't know what will happen. I'd like to hope it releases them from their guilt. I'd like to hope it helps the others who get an apology.

I don't know, I don't know. I'm in this netherworld. I'd like to think that in the times I grieved the loss of my grandfather, Remy, and others, my grief led me to a new and more complete understanding of them and me. Maybe receiving a difficult apology is the same. It's another one of those things can't be bulleted pointed or easily done as it sounds on paper.

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