neurotic apologies

I'm sorry.

Really, I'm so often sorry for so many things. I have an almost inexhaustible list of my flaws, largely compiled by yours truly and possibly added to by others along the way, for which I am likely to be sorry about at any given moment. You should know that if you tell me ten things that are wrong with me and another handful of things that might be kinda alright about me, I won't remember the latter, but the former will be permanently imprinted in my mind. So, you know, sorry 'bout that. I'm even sorry for things I shouldn't be sorry about... which makes me even sorrier (this, I am told, is the product of being a people-pleaser with abandonment issues - ahhh years of therapy right there, folks. Money well spent, I tell ya. Though it hasn't really made me any less apologetic).

I apologize when someone bumps into me. Because, after all, there I was being all up in their way with my inconvenient body. I'm sorry for being awkward. You know, because it makes other people feel awkward. I'm sorry for being clumsy, for talking too much when I get nervous, for getting nervous in the first place. I'm sorry for forgetting to lock the door, losing stuff, being too passive, too open and about a gazillion other clear and pressing inadequacies.

I'm sorry for just a general tendency not to get it right (though my kids like to tell me that this is how we learn. So I must've said something smart to them somewhere along the line!) I'm sorry for not saying enough smart things to them; for not having enough patience, enough energy, enough time.

I don't like using the telephone because I might call somebody at a time that is inconvenient for them. I might bother them (and Christ! I hate to be a bother). Or they might not want to talk to me at all, ever, even at a good time. And for any of these things, I'd be awfully sorry.

I'm sorry that I can't make everybody feel better, in this sometimes hugely crappy world that often makes people feel, well, crappy. I'm sorry that I often can't make myself feel better, for which I am well-medicated, and for which I sometimes also self-medicate, and for all of which, of course, I am apologetic.

I'm sorry that this post likely makes me sound like a basket-case, when in actuality, I think I'm fairly (possibly hyper) self-aware and generally upright person, if clearly prone to navel-gazing - my apologies.

sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.

In Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, Christie (Morag's adoptive father) has this wonderful, and to repeated refrain. He says that sorry is a "bloody christly useless, awful word." And I think he might be onto something good there.

But nevertheless I am really, totally, and completely sorry if you hate this blog post.