The Apology I Never Got and Will Never Send

I’m sorry for anything I did to hurt you. Please forgive me.

I find myself constantly creating scenarios in my head where someone who used to be my best friend reaches out and apologizes for everything.

Every time my phone lights up, a part of me hopes the notification is from him. And every time, I relive the disappointment when his name doesn’t appear.

I don’t want him back in my life. At least, I don’t think I do.

But every once in a while, something happens and he is still the person I instinctively want to tell. I hear a song we used to listen to or see something that reminds me of a joke we once shared. Something really good happens, and for half a second, I reach for a person I no longer talk to.

The strange part is that I’m still angry with him.

Or maybe the stranger part is that sometimes I think I like being angry with him.

I visualize all the good memories we shared, then force myself to remember the words he said that made me cry myself to sleep. I think about the days when I would get a hundred texts from him at once, only to be pulled back to what happened two years ago.

We went through something together that stayed with both of us long after it was over. For a few days afterward, he refused to speak to me. He decided that I should hate him.

I didn’t. But instead of letting me decide how I felt, he disappeared.

Eventually, he came back. We returned to talking every day, but something between us had changed.

Months later, he sent me a long text telling me how much he cared about me. He told me how important my happiness was to him, that he couldn’t wait to see all the things I would accomplish in the future, and that he would always be there cheering me on.

I believed him. And for a while, he was.

Until one random day, he disappeared again. This time, he didn’t come back.

Our daily texts abruptly stopped. I reached out several times, begging him to answer me, only to be met with silence. Someone who had once made me feel completely understood became someone who wouldn’t be around to see who I’d become.

Holding a grudge against him has become my way of keeping a friendship alive that, in reality, no longer exists.

The anger validates my hurt, but it also protects me. If I’m angry, I don’t have to admit that I miss him – or wonder what I could have done differently.

It’s easy to ask, “What did you do to me?”

It’s much harder to ask, “What did I do to you?”

For a long time, admitting that I had made mistakes felt like it would somehow invalidate the ways I had been hurt. If I acknowledge what I did wrong, does that somehow make what he did to me less wrong?

I used to treat forgiveness, apology, reconciliation and access as though they were a package deal. But they aren’t.

I can forgive him without inviting him back. I can apologize without asking to be friends again. I can stop holding a grudge without deciding that what he did was okay.

Maybe that’s what these days of repentance are asking of me.

For me, teshuvah this year has meant resisting the version of the story in which I was perfect – acknowledging my mistakes and reflecting on how I can be better.

Maybe the most sincere teshuvah isn’t sending the apology text at all. Maybe it’s recognizing what I did wrong and changing that behavior for the next person I love.

The friendship ended a long time ago, but I’m admittedly still hurt. I’ve started to notice how that hurt has followed me into other relationships. I keep my guard up. I expect endings before things have the chance to begin.

I thought that meant I had learned from what happened. Now I wonder if protecting myself from being hurt again has also kept people who never hurt me from fully knowing me.

Maybe the lesson I took from losing one relationship has been quietly shaping every relationship that came after it.

Now I look back on our friendship, and I don’t bury the good memories under the bad ones. I trust that G-d can give a relationship meaning without giving it permanence.

Like the last few years, these days of repentance have come with an apology I’m not getting and an apology I’m not sending. But this year, I’m taking a different approach – the apology I’m not sending is the one I intend to live instead. 

Leorah Emrani is a Maman @ UCLA board member.