While I do have other regrets in my life, I think those that cut deepest are those times that I acted cruelly or unjustly to someone as a defense mechanism against all the times that people treated me cruelly or unjustly in my youth.
I was bullied most of my childhood, by extended family as well as by my peers.
By my mid-teens, I was starting to be mean to certain people with the justification was that then I was doing it before they could do it to me, especially when we started drifting apart after being close. Always “as jest”, of course. Plausible deniability…
By my late twenties, I wouldn’t even let most people get closer than superficial interactions with me.
There are people, both living and deceased, that I wish I could apologize to for treating them the way I did. But how to find them? Even social media is useless for finding some of the people most owed an apology. And not everyone wants to hear an apology from me anyway. Those are the kinds of knives I used to stab people.
And while I try to not live in the past or in regrets, I do wish I could at least try to repair as best as I am able those moments where I was unnecessarily mean to another person out of avoidance of risking feeling pain myself.
Instead of avoiding pain, I now carry this poison with me with nowhere to set it down.
You have to laugh at the irony.
10 responses to “Half-penny thoughts — 12sep25”
I agree. The pain we caused others. And like you said, usually cause we were pained prior. And tried to be tough guys cause of it.
And we ended up showing our hand at how weak we were as we did so…
Yes we did. I’ve done a lot of dumb things and most of it I can just point to being young and goofy. But being a jerk for no reason, those are the regrets.
You absolve yourself by speaking (writing) aloud. Truly. You have to accept it for yourself, of course. No one else can do that.🙂
I intellectually know that. Sometimes the “gut” side doesn’t agree. 😅
There’s the rub
We’re human, so we all act badly at times. The fact that you recognise this and own up to it – on social media, no less, the popular modern-day confessional, demonstrates your regrets for your actions and goes far to absolve you in the eyes of the world. Forgiving yourself is a different matter, however, and I don’t know where you go with that. Maybe we’re supposed to live with it, as a reminder for our future behaviour? All I know is, you’re a far better person than those who won’t and can’t ever accept that they’re in the wrong – so maybe cut yourself some slack for your honesty, my friend? Take care of you. 🙂
Thanks.
Perhaps in the next life I’ll manage to act in a more skilled manner. I cannot change the past, but I can try to be a better person moving forward (as I have since my sobriety began). Not always successful, but getting moreso as time goes on.
That’s a great attitude. I still cringe from things I’ve done in the past, but there’s nothing I can do to change them. We learn from our mistakes and go forward aiming to be better. Sounds like you’re taking positive steps on the road. All the best for your journey. 🙂
Thanks! 🙏🏼