The Apology I’ll Never Get

He’s never going to say sorry. Not because he can’t. Because sorry would require seeing what he did. And seeing what he did would require being someone other than who he is.

I waited for it. For years. Even after I left. Especially after I left. Because leaving is supposed to be the thing that makes them see. That makes the truth undeniable. That forces a reckoning.

It didn’t. He reckoned nothing. He narrated the departure as my failure and his tragedy and settled into a version of events that required no accountability and no change. The smear campaign was the apology’s replacement. Instead of sorry he offered pathetic. Instead of I see what I did he offered she was always difficult.

I used to fantasise about the apology. In the shower. At 3am. In the car after drop-off. I’d write it in my head. The words he’d say if he were capable of saying them. I’m sorry I made you small. I’m sorry about the money. I’m sorry I thought you were dead and didn’t check. I’m sorry about all the things I said over toast that you’re still carrying.

He’ll never say any of it. And waiting for him to is giving him space he hasn’t earned in a future that doesn’t belong to him.

So I stopped waiting. Not all at once. Gradually. Like releasing a fist one finger at a time. The anger stays. The grief stays. The wish that it had been different stays. But the waiting. The specific, corrosive, energy-draining wait for words from a man who doesn’t have them.

That I let go.

The apology I needed wasn’t his to give. It was mine. To myself. For staying. For believing him. For making myself small enough to fit a life that was never designed to hold me.

I’m sorry. For all of it. For every bitten tongue and every swallowed truth and every red dress put in the back of the wardrobe.

That apology. The one from me to me. That’s the one that matters.

And it’s the only one I’ll ever need.