I received a long overdue apology in my inbox.
I stared at it—first, I stared at the name and the subject line, wondering what terrible thing was inside the message. I considered deleting it, unread, but I opened it with a shaking hand.
I read it once, twice, probably seven times.
It didn’t explain the why’s of why I took the full brunt of someone’s problems, problems that weren’t about me at all. It didn’t explain why they chose to make me the whipping boy. It didn’t explain why they took everything I was dreaming of and living for and believing in and tore it apart piece by piece until I was so broken that I didn’t even know myself anymore. It didn’t answer my questions, the things that kept me up at night for nights on end, the things that made my jaw clench so hard I cracked a tooth. It didn’t answer the “why me.”
But it was an apology. It is a blob of Neosporin to go on the wounds and maybe they won’t fester up anymore in nightmares and panics and fears.
It was way past due. It was appreciated. I think I would’ve preferred it in person, but then again, in person, I would’ve wanted to look this person in the eye and ask “why did you willfully tear me apart?” There’s probably not a good answer to that question; I can’t imagine that there is any truly acceptable answer to that question really, but I would’ve asked it anyway in person because I am an asker of hard questions when someone faces me. I won’t ask it in an email or a text, but when a person faces me, I ask those hard questions so I can see the truth in their eyes even if the truth won’t come out of their mouth…so better, I guess, that these were just typed words on a screen.
An apology.
On the way to work, a song came on that sums it up for me, so much that I listened to it 3 times on the drive. “All rise, you promises broken. Call my lovers by their names: lost hearts and words that are spoken to the wind, which blows before the rain.” So let it rain…here’s “Before the Rain” performed live in Montreal: