Didn’t Think I’d Turn Around And Say…
In March 2010, I attended the Victoria’s Secret Spring Break Party in Key West, Florida. At the time, it seemed to be as much of a hassle as it was a privilege. We arrived at Mallory Square in the afternoon to find that it had been vandalized in shades of pink: pink tents, pink beanbag chairs, pink solo cups, and 20ft tall pink inflatable dogs. Five of them. We secured a spot, front and center of the main stage and there we waited. For hours. It was a thousand degrees outside, the set-up was blocking any sea breezes, the beer was warm (and I hated beer), the DJ was playing bass-heavy cyclical nonsense, and I had to pee really, really bad. We were holding out to see the main event, which was a concert hosted by Behati Prinsloo (before she was Mrs. Adam Levine). The headliner was a new, relatively unknown band called One Republic, that had just made the Billboard charts with a track called “Apologize.” It was easily the most sedate and redundant song I ever had the displeasure of hearing and waiting in a sweaty audience to hear it played live was like waiting in Hell for admission into a shittier part of Hell.
When the lights came up and the first few notes rolled off the stage and over the crowd, my manner was revolutionized.
It was technically the same song, but it felt like completely different music. The pianist’s fingers ran marathons across the keys. The violinist arched and twisted with each pump of his bow. Beads of sweat tumbled over the singer’s forehead veins as he passionately strained on every melodious word. This song that I had heard and balked at a hundred times before stopped being a noise from a car speaker and became a feeling-- nothing sedate or redundant about it.
I’ve been in the audience when Tom Petty closed the night to “Last Dance with Mary Jane” and I’ve witnessed Steely Dan transform “Hey Nineteen” into a twenty-minute spell. This was not that. “Apologize” has its place on the soundtrack of my generation, but it is no symphonic masterpiece, nor is it a composition of lyrical excellence. Mostly it’s a refrain of the phrase it’s too late to apologize with some verse fragments tossed in for good measure. Regardless, that sticky night in Key West gave the song a singer, a violinist, a drummer, a pianist, a writer, and a beating heart. It also forewarned me on the risk of exposing emotion. There is a right time and place for delicate confessions. Getting the details wrong can mean the difference between being profoundly heard… or just being a noise.
If you know me, or if you’ve read any of my prior writing, you know that I don’t adhere to the Twelve Steps like it’s the Yellow Brick Road. I don’t veer for a lack of respect for Alcoholics Anonymous; the program, when properly executed, has saved millions (yes, millions) of people from the grave, from jail, from liver failure, and from continued chronic addiction. AA is sacrosanct and I wouldn’t touch it with a single nay-saying finger.
Maybe I’m a bad addict for going the way that I go, and for feeling the way that I do, but there are delicate facets to addiction recovery that I wouldn’t insult by conducting via a workbook. For a lot of people, early sobriety means buckling down and muscling through those Twelve Steps as quickly as possible. In which case, you are recovering the same way that you were drinking—like your actions don’t affect anyone but yourself. Which, to me, is the exact opposite of what we are asked to do: make amends to those we’ve wronged.
I’m not in a position to lecture on making amends, because I haven’t made amends; not to anyone… not entirely. It’s not because I’m lazy, or I don’t think it’s necessary, and I certainly didn’t forget. I’m sure that there are people in my life standing around, aggressively tapping their toes, waiting with decreasing patience for the day that I apologize… but they’ll have to keep waiting a bit longer. Because I need it to be right. Whether they know it or not, they need it to be right too.
I would hate to rush “amends” only to leave my victims with more questions than answers. This is not a situation where a quick fix will do. You wouldn’t spackle over a crack in the Hoover Dam and call it a day, therefore, you don’t give half-assed apologies for the things you did while drunk. You should be sharing earnest apologies for who you were as a person when you did those drunk things. The reason for the extended waiting period is that I can’t explain the things that I don’t yet understand, and I am still endeavoring to figure out who exactly I was when I was drinking.
It has been an eventful 18 months of deconstruction. I have stripped myself of every board, every coat of paint, and every loose shingle until there was nothing left of me but the bare bones. The good news is that I have the structural integrity of an Amish barn. The bad news is that rebuilding, when done correctly, takes time. I’m a lucky girl. I know that. I lost a few people in this horrific ordeal, but I also learned the extent to which the people who love me really love me. They doubled down on “for better or worse,” and I refuse to present them with an inferior product. That’s what drinking was: a lazy, cheap spackle job over the cracks in an otherwise sturdy Kara. The cracks kept splintering until it all fell apart.
Reconstruction takes time, but time is also important to my strategy. I need there to be time between myself and my drinking. I need distance between my lies and me. I need diligent work experience on my resume so when I reapply to be a human being, I can boast proficiency. I need to be in a dimension where people have to really rack their brains to recall the last time that I behaved poorly. I have to run a tight ship for a while to prove that I can run a tight ship. Why do I need to accomplish all of these things before making any apologies? Simple. Credibility.
As I said, in regard to apologies owed, I’m not lazy and I most certainly did not forget. How could I? Drunk- damage-incurred gnaws at my heart every second of every day. Then, for continuity, it wakes me from my nightmares to remind me that I am living a nightmare. I am mortified. Enough that there are times I am tempted to dial the phone aimlessly and sob-scream “I’m sorry!” at whoever will listen. But that doesn’t soothe their wounds, it only soothes mine. I’ve done enough apathetic self-soothing here, wouldn’t you agree?
The time, the effort, and the inventory are necessary for credibility. Credibility is necessary because, when I do look someone in the eye and say, “I am sorry,” I need them to believe me. If they can believe that I am sorry, then there is a chance they will believe the important things that I need them to hear: You did absolutely everything you could to help me. None of it was your fault. You did nothing wrong. You couldn’t have done anything differently. You did not deserve to be treated the way that I treated you. My words cannot just be noise when I need the people I love to feel the truth.
As much as I’ve insulted it, its too late to apologize is a catchy little ditty with staying power. It swims laps in my head all the time. The lyrics is nonsense, though. It’s never “too late” to apologize. It may be “too late” to get what you want out of an apology, but it is never “too late” to own up to your mistakes and admit your grievances. I suggest again that I may be a bad addict, but there are people I love deeply who will not be getting an apology from me. There is hurt, but hurt isn’t the reason I won’t apologize. There is betrayal, but betrayal isn’t the reason either. I’m an alcoholic, I’m not in the business of apologizing, I’m in the business of “making amends” and making things right. With some people, the right thing to do is to take my roots, my webs, my tentacles, and my “sorrys” out of their lives completely and permanently. I can be heartbroken by some and do right by others at the same time. I’ve seen me do it. Contrary to what you may have heard on the radio in 2010, a big part of doing right by the ones you love means, sometimes, it’s too soon to apologize.
