At the risk of sounding of sounding completely overly sentimental and utterly ridiculous, I'm going to say that writing this blog has given me a lot of gifts. Just writing gifts made me cringe. I am not one for "gifts" or "blessings", I'm more of a person who mocks those words. But here I am 5 years into a blog using the word "gifts". Although I've yet to use "blessings", so there's still that.
It's just that writing my thoughts makes me more conscious of them. Both the good and the bad. Not to mention the ugly. And the beyond ugly ones that are grotesquely fugly. Trust me on this one. And I've learned to accept that they're mine. I take ownership. Of how I'm feeling and how I react to how I'm feeling. It's that pesky reacting part that gets me into trouble every time. EVERY DAMN TIME. It's not a question of if I'll screw up, it's a question of when. But, I've been doing this new thing where I own my mistakes and say those painfully, excruciating words...
I'm sorry.
Why is it so insanely hard to say that? And then, when they're said how can those little words bring such enormous relief? So, why the hell do we fight it to begin with? Because our instinct is to protect ourselves via the expressway, denial. It's a toll road, it only costs your dignity and integrity. But who cares? You get to drive really, really fast right before you crash and burn. Plus, everybody else is doing it. Which kinda makes the superhighway backed up and not all that super.
So, I made a decision. I'm not sure when I made it exactly. It was so many mistakes ago now. I made the decision to own those words. And to choke them out any way I could. Accompanied with an ugly cry, an ashamed down turned head, with a crack in my voice like a 13 year old boy. Or I could even write it down in an old fashioned hand-written letter like the Amish do. (Please note I haven't fact checked that the Amish actually do that.) All I know is it's good to have options because no matter what I do, I'm guaranteed to make more missteps.
When I grew up parents didn't apologize to kids. It diminished their authority. But, I don't think that way. Anymore. I hope it's a lesson that I'm as fallible as everyone else is. And a lesson that how you should handle mistakes after they're made. And that how you rectify them says more about you than the mistake itself.
I hope.
2 comments:
I have been there.....and humility is a shitty addition to the diet, but ever so healthy. *sigh*
My parenting is based around self acceptance, and that acceptance means acknowledging when I've got it wrong and saying sorry. I hope that if my kids see that I am humble enough to do this they will consider it normal and live their lives in a similar way.
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