08/07/2024: The Honest Truth

If I could have just one wish, I’d wish for one free pass to learn the honest truth. Just one genuine truth, the one I never got from the person who keeps apologizing for everything except the one thing she did wrong by me. 

This morning, I woke up to something I didn’t expect and sure as hell didn’t want. A ghost from my past, long forgotten, reminded me of her presence, and sent me an insincere and generic apology that she seems to have sent to everyone that said the same thing. 

The funny part about this is that she’s sorry for our childhood, for the way she treated me and our friends back then. And that’s not what I care about at all. If it’s taken her this long to realize she was a bully almost twenty years ago, then it’s clear to me she’s nowhere near ready to apologize for the thing I still can’t forget that she did less than a decade ago. 

I guess I should expect that message in ten years, or never. I just don’t understand the obsession, the need to remind me of her existence right on schedule every two to three years. It’s like it’s so important to her all of a sudden that her past victims forgive her and absolve her for everything she’s done. If I were her, I’d try to start with unique and heartfelt apologies for everyone that suffered her wrath. 

I guess she didn’t expect me to find out that she sent the same message to everyone involved, and that I wouldn’t buckle at the word “sorry.” It’s clear, based on the last time this happened and this time, that she’s only seeking validation for the things she’s ready to apologize for, to be forgiven for. 

Any time I’ve confronted her about the real truth I’m still waiting to hear, she never owns up to that part, and instead proceeds to express “regret” at how things ended, but how she wouldn’t change how she handled things. Who asks a friend to believe her and gives her an ultimatum if she doesn’t leave her significant other and take her word for it and not even hear him out? A jealous monster, that’s who. A gaslighter that even in a message of apology can’t not make it about herself and her manipulations. 

I suppose the one truth I never heard from her mouth is the one and only thing she has left to use against me, to hold over my head to remind me of her existence and what happened. Maybe that’s why she’ll never reveal the truth; all her power would be gone, all her cards would be played. Whatever it is, I think she has underestimated my growth and change, and if she keeps pushing I will push back, even if her goal is to make me look like the bad buy for not accepting all of her “sincere and heartfelt” apologies.