Sorry is a journey..not just a word

Its been a month of intense reactions since my last blog post.  

From it being called pretentious to some others not taking kindly to my writing it in the first place. The reactions have come fast and furious…but the most common reaction that I got was of people saying how brave it was of me to say sorry; about how they felt it was admirable to have owned up to my error and mistake

Is it such a big deal to say I’m sorry? Why is it considered brave and admirable to say I was wrong and admit to one's failings and shortcomings? And how people react to this much often used word 'Sorry'. 

In my opinion ,it is neither brave to say sorry nor is it admirable to say it. It’s the least one can do. When we make a mistake that hurts someone , is not saying sorry the first step that we take towards redemption for ourselves? Or are we living in a world where saying sorry is considered a rarity rather than the norm. 

A girl friend of mine who I have been constantly speaking to through this period kept telling me how proud she was of me that I had the courage to own up and say sorry. Her boyfriend didn’t. Does that make me a better person? 

I would most definitely say not. But it seems like saying sorry and meaning it has become a rare commodity in today’s world. 

Most of us use the word 'Sorry' in our daily lives in many ways; when we spill water on someone, when we interrupt someone’s conversation, or even if we accidentally trip someone. What seems rather inadequate is that the English language has given us the same word to apologize to someone when you make a mistake as small as that or an error as grave as murder. Unfortunately there is no other word and so when we use it for a graver error, it sounds frivolous or it doesn’t sound like it’s meant. No matter how grave the error or how big the crime, the only words that can be used are 'I’m sorry'. Is that the reason it’s not taken at face value?? And the motives questioned? Is that why maybe, it isn't enough? 

The one thing that I have realized in the past one month is that sorry is not a word, its a journey.Saying the word is only the beginning of that journey. 

How do you show that you’re sorry?  How does someone believe that you are apologetic and regret what you have done? Its only actions that can show that …and actions take time. They take time to do as well as for them to be seen and believed.   

For when someone is hurting, it’s difficult to believe that you are sorry and are regretful of your actions. Every mistake that you have done in the past however small, will be brought out and slammed against you and even the good will be tinged with the hurt of the wrong. But the only thing that you can do if you are genuinely regretful is to continue doing your actions. For it is your actions that will show whethere or not you are geniunely remorseful of your actions . But it will have to be walked alone. Rest assured, it will be long, longer than you expect it to be…..Along this journey, you will find friends who will support you, family that will stand by you. But the acceptance of what you have done and not letting it bog you down is a journey that needs to be done alone.  

There is a difference in feeling sorry and feeling sorry for yourself. There will be times when you would almost slip into self-bashing mode …into a state where everything about yourself would seem wrong. But then family and friends would step in to stop you from feeling that way, to just say "Hey you did wrong, very wrong. But you also have the ability to make it right." …and that’s what sorry actually means, the journey to make it right. For the wrong that we do inflicts pain not just on the people we do it to,but also on ourselves. 

The most difficult thing is to make the people you have hurt actually believe that you are sorry ….they might or they never will …but if it really matters and if you really feel that you have done wrong …make your self believe that you are sorry …walk the path …not just say the word …

Sorry is a journey …not just a word …saying it is just the first step…

I AM GUILTY

This is maybe the hardest blog that I have written,and is in a away a continuation of my last blog. Harder because its an admission of guilt for things that I have done wrong, caused hurt, caused emotional trauma and a lot more to people that I claimed to love. Why I did it? .What made me do things that would classify as pure mean? Those are reasons I am finding. But the first step is to admit that I was wrong, and I am guilty.

 These two women gave me all that a man could ask for. Above all; unconditional love. In return, I abused it. I lied, I cheated and behaved like a total jerk. All because I didn’t have the courage to tell the truth. It led the lies to build up, until one day they caught up with me. The ugliness that was brought out was something that I would have never wanted to see, but see I did. It was almost like a bomber pilot who is asked to visit the village that he has just dropped a bomb on, to see the destruction, pain and the bloodshed that followed the bomb strike. Haunting images that I am sure would stay with him long enough and haunt him long him enough for him to never do it again. I had caused such immense pain and destruction to two people and it was right in front of me to see. The weeks that followed after that were spent in a daze; where I questioned everything that I had done in my life, every relationship that I had ever been in and every friendship that I had built. Was I really a bad person? Was I just so bad that everything that I had ever done was purely selfish and with just me in mind? I needed to be told by someone that I wasn’t all black, because at that juncture I felt all black. I felt that all I was capable of spreading was hurt and lies.

And the reassurances came, from friends, from ex girlfriends and from people around, but the struggle was to believe it, the damage that I had caused was so severe that reassurances were just calming the surface down. The internal hurt and pain that I felt knowing what I had done refused to subside. To subside that pain, I knew that I had to bring about a change, a change in a lot of things, to make sure that the ugliness that I saw that day never comes back again. I can’t turn back the clock, but what I can do is to make sure that I don’t cause any more hurt on account of my actions.

We all make mistakes in our lives, but most of the times as soon as we are forgiven we forget the damage that the mistake had caused and we move on. And many a times we make that same mistake again, somewhere else in another form. Isn’t life just a cycle of making mistakes? Of learning from them and then making them all over again.That could be true,but mistakes that cause damage to such degree that I saw cant be made and there is no justification that one can offer

The biggest lesson that these two women have taught me is that men don’t need to lie. Women are far stronger than what we give them credit for. We as men are in our head protecting women by telling them a lie, but what we are doing is actually setting them up for more hurt when they eventually find out the truth. We lie, deceive and make up stories when all we have to do is tell the truth, the truth will never need to be remembered the next time we are asked about it, cause it’s the truth.

I was careless, callous and selfish, I never thought of the consequences that my life choices will have. The living in the moment theory that I had lived with till now made me immune to the thought of the consequences of my actions. I was selfish and I lived in the moment only for myself, a kind of a existence where I never ever felt that what I am doing today will have a consequence and effect on tomorrow.

Not many things in your life shake you up to the core, make you look in the mirror and not like what you see…right now that’s where I am. Whether women that I have hurt in my life ever forgive me, I don’t know, because right now I am unable to forgive myself. The writing of this blog is the first step that I have taken towards a better place, for I know that the better place exists, and I want to be there.

The first step is to say …I am guilty and I want to change. The change is hard, but when you see the damage you have caused, it doesn’t leave you with any other option ..

The Carpet Needs Cleaning

I have a confession. I’ve been thinking about it all of last week and I believe I’m finally ready to dust the cobwebs in my head. I have a habit of not communicating the truth. I call it “omission”. I don’t volunteer information about myself and I’ll keep mum until someone pushes me into a corner and demands that they be told. I guess the world calls it lying… But in my head, they’re just tools I use to protect me and sometimes the people I care for from uncomfortable truths. I believe in the what-you-don’t-know-doesn’t-hurt-you principle. But last week things happened that made me realise that this might not be true. I took a long, hard look at my life today, I’m questioning these lifelong habits of mine. Why do I hide the truth?? Why do I have a problem with intimacy?? Have I been sweeping things under the carpet for so long that I don’t even realise how much it is harming my relationships until it is too late? Maybe now is the time to clean the carpet… Because from where I stand today, it seems just too damn dirty.

It started when I was 12. I was playing cricket and I had a fight with a boy. I hit him. He got injured and starting bleeding. When I went home and told my mother about it, I was expecting admonishment, but I was also hoping that she’d be happy I didn’t lie and stand by me despite my mistake. But all I got was a sound thrashing. Maybe she’d just had a bad day and was in a foul mood, but that became my first impression of truth—it doesn’t serve any real purpose.

When I grew up, I went to the NDA. It was a place where rules were meant to be broken. The only rule you needed to survive was, “Whatever you do, don’t get caught.” For three years, that became the mantra of my life. I stepped into the real world with this diktat firmly planted in my head. Don’t ask, don’t tell… Don’t ask, don’t… It became the principle of my life. And every time an uncomfortable situation arose, I chose to simply sweep it under the carpet. Every time there were difficult moments in my relationships, it became my habit to just sweep the questions under the carpet.

We, as creatures of convenience, hate confrontation. In our fast-paced lives, we’re all already battling so many stressful situations that we tend to shy away from adding any more to the number. We don’t want to have to think of one more unresolved issue in our life. And so we keep shoving them under the carpet. Out of sight is out of mind. But then one day, the pile of dirt becomes so big that when you walk into your house, all you can see anywhere is the dust. And then you fall sick.

You realise how ugly a once-beautiful thing has become. And you wonder how it ever reached that point… When did things become so nasty… You also feel angry. But expressing that anger becomes difficult. You either explode, or you implode. The years of shoving things under the carpet catch up on you and suddenly you’re angry beyond words. All this anger finds expression in that one incident that acted as a trigger. For a while, it seems like your world has come crashing down. 

But the truth is, we’re not angry over what has happened now, we’re angry about all the years of pent-up frustration. And the day that frustration finds a voice, it feels like the end of the world. We fight with those closest to us, say nasty things and sometimes cause irreparable damage to some relationships.

It’s hard for me to admit, but I think in life, we need to be able to talk to the people we love… We need to express what we feel, and above all, we need to stop pretending that it doesn’t matter… It does matter. In ways unknown to us, these little, little things keep playing on our minds. They’re like little parasites, slowly eating away at us, waiting for that one day when something big happens. I’ve learnt that to be able to survive those big days, we need to have relationships that are rock solid. Because otherwise, the moment we lean on what we thought was a rock, it crumbles into dust.

We need to finish our unfinished businesses. Go back and complete the fights, the discussions and the arguments. A woman I once dated told me that the one thing she loved about me was my habit of not sleeping over a fight and my efforts to resolve it before we went to bed. I do that with most of my fights. But I also need to start doing that for my issues. I need to resolve my intimacy issues, my feelings of inadequacy when someone loves me beyond explanation or reason. I don’t know why I question whether I deserve her love or not… My tendency to play Jesus in the lives of the people around me… I’ve been sweeping these issues under the carpet for far too long now.

I don’t want last week to ever happen in my life again. I don’t want to feel that kind of anger ever again. I know that the anger was not over the incident, but over the feelings I had bottled up for so very long… I’m cleaning my carpet these days. Dusting it and putting it out in the sun. Each day, it looks better. But it’s going to take a while, there’s many years’ worth of dust on this one.