I'm sorry for what I said, or did, or thought
Ignorance is a starting place for growth
Experience can be transformative, whether it’s born out of ignorance or naiveté. It’s how you respond that matters. As a teenager, I often responded poorly. It’s time I addressed that.
In a previous piece, I discussed a manipulative friend from my youth (Ronnie). He provoked others to fight me. He engineered the constant ridicule of someone in my first friend group (Bobby). It’s safe to say that he was an unhappy person who counterbalanced his pain by inflicting it on others. A true sadist. What I hate admitting is that I fell prey to the trap.
A decade or so ago, someone showed me a video that Ronnie and I made in his basement. It was a mock trial of Bobby that condemned him to a life sentence of being the ridiculous caricature we made of him.
I was mortified when I saw the video. I played Bobby. I’m not proud of what I said, did, or thought. I portrayed him as a fool. When you think of the words and expressions that should never be uttered aloud, it’s likely I said them.
On a subconscious level, there was something attractive about the idea of continuing to pass along the pain and sadness I felt to others. A newborn sadist, bred from the inability to tell right from wrong, purging pain onto an unsuspecting victim.
I’d like to say that I didn’t recognize myself, or that I did this at gunpoint, but I can’t. I did it all of my own volition. I’d also like to say that this was an isolated incident, but it wasn’t. In the words of Buster Bluth, I’m a monster.
My words and actions were reflections of my surroundings, and I did nothing to experience anything outside of their walls.
That is not an excuse, just a statement of fact. It took far too long to outgrow my ignorance, and this happened on multiple occasions.
While watching TV one day, I made a misguided connection. As a man in a Speedo walked towards the camera, it was hard not to have my eyes drawn directly to the banana hammock. It’s basically waving at you with each leg’s forward step. I erroneously connected this to women’s cleavage.
With ignorance on full display, I took the thought to Facebook. I asked a misguided question about whether provocative dress encouraged unwanted attention. It was a stupid and harmful question that showed how deep my ignorance ran.
It’s hard to recall each instance of my transgressions, though these two examples should make the point. I said and thought bad things. I was wrong. I did things people shouldn’t. It’s who I was, but not who I am. I made mistakes and grew from them.
Sticking your finger in a socket teaches you to never do that again. Some people don’t need to try. Some learn immediately. I kept shocking myself before I learned to stop. When you’re shocking yourself, you are both perpetrator and victim.
The things I said and did impacted others. That’s where I always feel remorse. When I learned this lesson, I reached out to Bobby to apologize. We had lost touch. It was nice to reconnect. Eventually, he pulled away, and I can’t say I blame him. My actions reshaped some part of him, and he probably does not want a reminder of that. I wouldn’t.
The problem is that you don’t always know if you’ve hurt someone. It makes me wonder who needs to heal because of me. I hope it’s nobody, though it seems improbable to go this far in life without doing some harm.
Ignorance takes a different form here, one from which I can neither grow nor make things right. How can you say sorry to someone you never knew you hurt? All I can do is open myself up to those I may have hurt and offer the opportunity to help heal.