Apologies

Apologies are hard. Especially when they're more necessary for your own healing than somebody else's. You know what I mean? You do something and then you think, "That was stupid. Why did I do that?" Chances are that nine out of ten times the other person just assumed you're a social moron but wasn't actually offended. Times like that are easy for them to brush off, but you're left stressing and anxious about what you did.

I have times like that ALL the time. To the good ladies in my book club, my apologies for bringing up academics and intelligence too much when we were discussing "Freakonomics." Y'all had a good laugh at my social ineptitude--and frankly, so did I!--but I left worrying if I sounded all highfalutin' when I talked about how important education is to my family. Sheesh I still feel embarrassed. See how smart I am? I'm not smart enough to keep my big mouth closed when it needs to be. My social IQ is sometimes zero. Or is it possible for my social IQ to be a negative number? 'Nuff said.

So I had a small apology I wanted to make today, but I thought logically to myself: "Juliana, let sleeping dogs lie. Sheesh, too many cliches running around my head. Can't you think of something better than 'sleeping dogs lie'? Back to the point: forget about it--they'll forget about it--all will be well. Time can heal all wounds. Dang cliches!" So what did I do? Naturally I apologized anyway. This was tricky and it left me close to tears because of that dang negative number social IQ.

The trick is that an apology should not be an invitation for consolation. The point of apologizing SHOULD NOT BE begging for comfort! Naturally when you're apologizing for something, you're making yourself somewhat vulnerable. Weak. At the mercy of somebody else's ... well, uh, mercy I guess. The trick is to not dwell on your own patheticness--no matter how infinite said patheticness is--or else the apology is just a twisted, manipulative way to get somebody that YOU HAVE WRONGED to give you sympathy. That's so wrong but so easy to inadvertently do.

I've been the recipient of this tactic many times, and it annoys the bejeebers out of me. I want to say, "This is not about you. It's about me. Focus! I deserve the pity here--not you!" Of course, that isn't charitable. It's not even nice. It's selfish. But apologies-that-aren't-apologies annoy me. I get a bit testy when it comes to emotionally manipulative annoyances.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine today. She had called me on Saturday to apologize for some things that were on her mind--I never would have known I had been wronged if she hadn't admitted it to me. Naturally I wanted to assure her that no offense was taken and that I adored her for valuing my friendship enough to make things right. This would have been easy to do because she wasn't begging for the validation I wanted to give her. She was sincerely apologizing. However, as I started getting myself all revved up for the "I'm okay. You're okay. We're okay!" speech, the phone connection died. We couldn't make contact again until today, but man. That was funny. Kind of like some emotional director yelling, "Cut! That's a wrap, folks. We'll pick it up again on Monday!"