A friend. A family member. A stranger. As human beings, we make mistakes. Life would be easier if those mistakes only hurt us and us alone, but unfortunately it’s not uncommon to make a mistake that hurts others too.
Some might want to deflect their responsibility (e.g., “Well, it’s actually your fault and I have no part in this”) because it sucks to know you’ve wronged someone, but we all do it. There are many who humbly admit it, who feel the guilt and sorrow about the hurt they’ve caused. They want to make amends. Apologize.
But what does one do when they can’t speak to the person they want to apologize to?
If you’re lucky, you haven’t experienced this. Maybe not a single reader of mine will relate. However, more often than not, we’re not alone in our experiences.
Me? Well, more than once I’ve found myself unable to come in contact with the person my heart is breaking for. These situations can occur due to a number of reasons, and I’m sure I won’t list them all, but here are a few:
- A person has passed on.
- Speaking with them would rub salt in the wound (e.g., post-breakup).
- They have asked you not to contact them.
- Contacting them would be harmful for you (e.g., the other person isn’t able to hold a conversation and listen, instead of attacking, blaming, shaming, etc.).
- The timing isn’t right (e.g., the wound is too fresh for both parties … if it’s too fresh for you but not for the other person, do what you can to show up and say sorry).
- You don’t have their contact information.
I remember a breakup that haunted me for years. Off and on I would think about this boyfriend. A complete gent, never mean to me, truly someone who would have stuck by my side to the end. Looking back on my breakup, I realized how much my immaturity played into it. Not to mention, my actions the day before my breakup were unsavory.
Was I young and not fully aware of what I was doing? Sure. I had just graduated high school. I didn’t have the best family background to guide me. And I was receiving some bad advice.
But I was still responsible for my choice, and while now I’ve given myself enough grace and space to grow from what I did, I couldn’t help but feel agony for years over the way I hurt my ex.
Thank goodness I’ve only had to deal with this type of thing once!
Psych. Here’s a couple more things about being human: learning isn’t linear, and difficult situations will never disappear forever. Hence why I have also dealt with this situation with a family member and why I am dealing with this situation now.
In my current situation, I find myself daydreaming of a day when I can take this person to lunch (a common place for me to imagine closure happening—when we’re devouring good food out in the sunlight). I sit across from them, letting them speak all their pain, and I affirm it. I say my sorries and recognize the part I played in their pain. We both leave feeling more seen, feeling a little more healed.
Sounds kind of perfect, huh? Yeah. Too bad I’m not sure if this would actually happen. At least, not yet.
In real life, the only time this person has reached out to me has been anonymously, and it’s been filled with contempt. If we did have lunch, there’s a good chance it would end up as the “contacting them would be harmful for you” situation. As much as I’m down for apologizing, I’m not down for putting yourself in abusive or harmful places—especially when your apology will go unheard or unreasonably rejected.
No matter how much we grow, we can’t help whether another person will receive that growth or not. So, lately I’ve been pondering how to cope with the grief of being unable to look a person in the face and say, “I’m sorry.”
How do we deal with being unable to come together in unity with another person and build a better future? Learn from and let go of the past? How do we cope with not having that type of closure?
Well, we could choose not to cope. Refuse that we can do this on our own. Let this gurgle within us for the rest of our lives.
Sounds uncomfortable and unideal to me.
We could also choose to cope and find closure on our own. Sounds difficult and energy consuming. It also sounds like it would have big payoffs: peace, contentment with oneself, hope for the future.
Finding closure can come in many ways, and what will be right for you depends on you and your situation. Individuals are as, if not more, unique as the various situations they find themselves in. My suggestions below won’t cover all the ways one could deal with this. Hopefully, though, they inspire some ideas.
Write a letter. It’s a suggestion that dates far back, but it’s given because it can work well. I wrote a letter to my ex, intending to send it. The letter never found its destination, but it helped me get my thoughts and feelings out. I felt assured that if we ever met again, I would know what to say.
Don’t give up your daydream. Don’t get sucked into it and obsess, but don’t shun it either.
If you daydream about having a conversation with this person one day, you might feel like a fool. If you’re like me, you’ve felt silly almost every time, imagining the cruel responses you could get for thinking this could happen. “How naive.” “As if you deserve that.” “The last thing they need is to speak to you.”
Imagining these responses prepares one for the worst, but it’s actually not naive to believe that healing can happen. Everyone deserves a chance to change. Maybe someone could benefit from hearing that you feel bad for how you hurt them.
The daydream isn’t foolish or silly. It’s hopeful, and it shows you care. It shows you have the capacity to love.
Allowing the daydream to exist means allowing your charity for the person to live. Again, don’t ruminate upon it, but if it comes up, don’t feel bad either.
It shows you’re in a place ready to have a conversation with them, should it ever happen. It also can provide healing because you’re allowing yourself to feel what you feel; you’re allowing yourself to believe you belong in this better future, whether the other person participates in it or not.
Forgive yourself. Closure doesn’t have to depend on another person. Sure, it would help to have them involved, but it doesn’t have to wait until then. Start with forgiving yourself first.
Not everyone will let us change, but we can let ourselves change. Not everyone will receive our growth, but we can receive our own growth. Not everyone will accept that we’re becoming a healthier person, but we can accept and encourage our improvements.
The great thing about being an adult individual is that you’re in charge of taking care of yourself. That means you need to be the first one to accept your apologies. By showing love to yourself, no matter how flawed you are, you’ll be able to better show up for those around you anyhow—including those you’ve hurt.
Accept that you can’t change the past. Along with daydreaming about closure, you might also daydream about what life might be like had you not made certain mistakes. Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”
Sometimes, we know better. Many times, we don’t. A lot of us don’t purposely go out and try to destroy another person. We don’t set out saying, “What wrongs can I accomplish today?” Often, we either set out with the best intentions and make a mistake because there’s a lesson we haven’t learned yet, or we get caught up in a mix of lacking mental health and lacking emotional regulation.
In these cases, it’s easier to look back and “connect the dots.” We curse ourselves, thinking about how simple the answers were. If only we had done this or that. If only we hadn’t done this or that.
Part of forgiving ourselves means accepting ourselves, present and past. It means accepting that we can’t change who we were or what we did, but we can learn from the past. We can move forward making decisions that better align with who we want to be, and we can create space for ourselves knowing we’ll never perfectly be the person we want to be. What matters is that we are trying.
You might think, “I knew exactly what I did was wrong, and I still did it.” That’s a hard one to swallow.
I think what I’ve said still applies: you need to forgive yourself and accept you can’t change the past. If you don’t, you run the risk of staying stagnant. Getting caught up in a state of glum, you could easily lose ambition and purpose for changing your actions. In a state of hope and love, you have more opportunity to be who you want to be.
Seek professional help. I hope these ideas will give you some momentum, but don’t feel you need to navigate complex situations alone. Take a load off your shoulders. Go to a therapist and get their insight. It will take a few sessions, but if you find a therapist that’s the right fit, you will make progress. Feel healing. Feel closure.
More than anything, I wish we could have more conversations that united us as a people. I wish there was more space for growth and love out there. But we can’t control our community, we can’t control other’s choices, and we can’t always control our circumstances.
We can control our choices and nothing more.
As soon as we accept that, we can make steps forward in the coping process. We can find closure by seeking healing within ourselves. Then we’ll be ready when, if one day, the time comes when we can look that person in the face and say with all sincerity of heart, “I’m sorry.”
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