Sorry!

Image credit: Photo by boxchain on Flickr (It's codie graffiti!)

I tend to apologize for things. A lot. If things are going less than perfectly, if I'm less than perfect, it's hard for me to go 15 seconds without "I'm so sorry" slipping out. If you've met me in real life, you've almost certainly heard me apologize for something, warranted or not. And if I didn't, I'm sorry.

Way back in my pre-marriage, pre-kid days, an ex-boyfriend spilled a drink and as it splashed on the table and down to the floor, my first impulse, before even grabbing something to wipe it up, was to apologize. "I'm sorry," I gasped...

"Stop doing that!" he snapped, "Stop apologizing for everything. You do it all the time. I spilled the drink. I did it. Why are you apologizing for it?"

I had no idea. It was reflex. I didn't know that I did it all the time, let alone why. I just knew I felt bad about the drink being spilled, that it loomed in my mind as a potentially catastrophic, evening ruining event. I knew that I wanted to somehow make him feel better about it. Besides, I had a lot of faults and there probably was some reason that I had contributed to the situation. Distracted him so that his hand slipped perhaps? Filled the glass too high? Something about it was surely my fault too.

In typical form, I apologized to him for apologizing, but I didn't really see what was wrong with saying "I'm sorry." Wasn't apologizing a good thing? Wasn't the problem really with all those people who spilled a drink and didn't apologize or offer to help clean up, rather than with people like me, who apologized and cleaned up even though they hadn't caused the mess at all?

It wasn't until years later, when I saw my mother preemptively apologizing for the equivalent of drinks-she-hadn't-spilled in order to soothe my father and fend off his anger, that I realized where that behavior had come from. I had grown up to be an emotional bomb technician and "I'm sorry" was the shield I'd learned to hold up, one of the tools of the trade. Taking responsibility for other people's behavior helped me defuse their anger and their negative feelings. I thought that if I just did things just right, took care of everyone's feelings right, no one would ever be angry and we would all ride unicorns to cloud castles to eat rainbows for breakfast and everyone would love me forever and I'd never be alone. But the truth was, I had no real control over the bomb; it was going to blow at some point no matter what I did, and in the meantime, I was stressed for my life trying to stop the unstoppable.

I've been working on my excessive apologizing, but when I'm down or stressed or feeling less than, the apologies and the need to please come squeezing and slipping out in odd inappropriate places, like clay pressed between my fingers. Yesterday, my blogging friend Laurie directed me to a post on Sassymonkey's blog. I wanted to leave a comment, but I was nervous and self-conscious (as I always am meeting new people).

Sassymonkey's commenters were discussing the evils of donate buttons on blogs, and one of my thoughts was, "Oh, no. I'm one of those terrible people with a donate button on my blog. I was ambivalent about putting it up. Maybe it was wrong after all Maybe if they decide to check me out, they are going to see the donate button and be angry and hate me for not doing things right." So, I was apologetic for it, and Sassymonkey totally called me on it. She e-mailed me to tell me I should own my donate button. Love it. Wear it proudly. And she's right, of course.

So, I just want to say: I'm sorry, Sassymonkey.

Um, damn, I clearly still need some work on this. Well, at least whenever I actually do work the 12 Steps, I'll be really awesome at Step 10: "...and when we were wrong promptly admitted it."

This post originally published at The Second Road.