There's A Man Who Walks Beside Me, He Is Who I Used To Be

Apologies are complex. They can be delicate and thorny and soft and fatal all at once. They can be deceiving in their earnestness and their shallowness. At worst they are both simultaneously. At best…you wouldn’t need them in the first place.

I for one have a long list of things I never plan on apologizing for. Sure, I probably should. I’d be a better man and the other person might even become a friend. But I have enough friends and by this point rehashing the past seems rather pointless. Maybe when I get older, closer to The End, I’ll change my mind. Probably not though. 

The main issue I have is that I don’t remember a majority of what I would be apologizing for. I’m certain I did a lot of questionable things on my good days and things it’s probably best I can’t recall on my worst. I was, in short, an asshole. I’ll freely admit that much. (And I’m sure there’s countless others who would be glad to tell you all about it.) I’m not proud of course but the truth is the truth. 

Now I’ll gladly offer a general deep, heartfelt apology for being a horses’s ass when I was drinking. Aside from being part of the AA program, apologizing for drunken me just makes sense. There was little of redeeming value in my actions and interactions from ages nine to twenty seven. (Damn…that’s depressing to write.)

Alcohol does not - I repeat NOT - enhance anyone’s positive qualities. There are few pictures of my drinking days and zero videos. I was lucky enough to sober up right as the iPhone debuted. I dodged that bullet! The photos are grainy and blurry and were most likely shot on a point and shoot disposable from Walgreen’s. But regardless of how cloudy the pictures turned out the memories of those times still loom large in some people’s minds. Bigger than life. Bigger than the love we shared. Bigger than anything else about me. Memories of nights that started out in innocence and almost always ended with mysterious bruises, phantom skinned knees, dented fenders, pumped stomaches, notices to appear before a judge, and sunrises already harsh from the growing pain jamming at the back of our eyeballs made all the more jarring by the contrasting bleakness of the local police drunk tank.

For every memory I can personally recall there must be ten I don’t. And the one I can remember is such a conglomeration of stomach-churning, asinine foolishness that even the most steadfast frat pledge would be apt to gawk with a slack jaw at the shitshow that was my twenties.

I woulds actually apologize to that guy, the pledge. While I never “went Greek” I attended enough keg parties that the odds are good I either threw up on his shoes or tried my level best to sleep with his girlfriend. It goes without saying that I was probably more successful at the former than the latter.

Then there were all the singers I alienated while I was running my karaoke business. Actually, no. Never mind. Most of them were as bad or worse (well, sometimes) than I was. If anything we all owe each other overlapping apologies that would take a lifetime to get through. It’s safe to say my folly cancels out their folly. Fantastic! Clean slate!

But what about now? What about recent history? What about the past thirteen and a half years? I haven’t had a drop of alcohol and not so much as a single pill or puff of a joint. All my actions, words, and intentions were mine and mine alone. My head was clear. My thoughts were lucid.

This…complicates things.

A clear mind doesn’t equate to clear thought. Lies are still possible (read: likely). Fibs run rampant. “Untruths” is a much more poetic term but it’s ultimately very misleading. Lies are lies are lies, sober or drunk or high. But there’s something more approaching fatal when a lie is told sober. And the plain fact is the lack of an apology for this kind of lie hits a new level of unacceptable. Anything done willfully must be accounted for. Not in a “because I wanted to” way, but with actual thought and introspection. A lie willfully told needs - demands! - and apology.

So I’ve begun to make them, despite how I started this essay. Another lie? Fib? Untruth? Whichever. But I haven’t made all of them. Some. More than I expected at this point and especially if it happened in the past decade or so. Hey, denying you’re not an asshat when people have receipts of you being an asshat won’t endear you to anyone. So I hand out apologies like the Wizard handing out gifts from his bag: all personalized and all meaningful, even if they’re a little abstract.

Abstract because old habits die hard, which is really more of an excuse than a reason. My ex is convinced I was a sort of low key sociopath. Maybe I was (?). I don’t think I’m far enough removed from that particular relationship to adequately judge my own narcissism, if that is what it was. (For the record and for what it’s worth I denied the whole time we were together that I was codependent. After everything fell apart I did my research and learned that I was, in fact, a raging relationship ruining codependent. I will apologize for that. So if you’re reading this, I’m sorry.)

I want everyone who knew me back then as well as the ones I know now (the Venn diagram would barely overlap) to know I’m trustworthy and no longer a douche canoe, as I was so colorfully labeled at various times in the past. And maybe a few apologies is a good place to start.