Wednesday, 4 February 2015


I'm one of those girls who seems to constantly apologise for herself. For someone who aggressively talks about ignorant people in the supermarket, I spend a considerable amount of time apologising to inanimate objects that I bump into, or sometimes even people who bump into me. It's not just literal, physical things that I apologise for either - I apologise for myself, for the things that bother me, and for the things I like. Nearly every sentence out of my mouth either starts or ends with the word "sorry", some days. In the same way that when you're big on eyebrows you can't help noticing whether everybody else's eyebrows are sound or not, as someone who spends stupid amounts of time saying sorry, it's glaringly obvious to me that there are some people out there who don't say sorry at all.

I've always been one of those people - poor at playing hard to get. I feel mean not texting back straight away, I will still check you're okay even in the middle of an argument, and if you need me? It wouldn't matter if you'd attempted to murder one of my family members days earlier, I'd still drop everything to help you. I've always been like that, you can ask Ruby. She used to rat me out in the playground daily, but I'd never tell a teacher on her - mainly because I'd feel too bad (also because she told me I wasn't allowed.) In a weird way, this warped sense of neediness has only attracted people that are the exact opposite to me, for the most part. I spent my teenage years growing up playing textperiment (I went to a girls school okay, we did weird things - basically, this meant spanning the whole day without texting anybody unless they text you first) and consequently fuming when my phone lay silent, and then texting to check nobody was unhappy or in mortal danger.

As I've grown up, I've learned to see the subtle differences in apologies between people like me, "I'm sorry, I honestly didn't mean to do that, are you okay?" and people who token apologise, "I'm sorry that you felt that way about it." It baffles me how many people seemingly can't just say, hey, I'm sorry, and move on with their life. It frustrates me how many apologies I've gone without, and moved on anyway - but I think that says a lot about me as a person in a positive way (maybe.) Mostly - I just don't get it. An apology isn't a sign of weakness, it's an acknowledgment that what you did was crappy, or uncalled for, or plain ignorant, it's a promise to at least try to remember to not do it again. Apologies are cool, I can honestly say I've never gotten an apology that made me feel worse rather than better (although, I am picturing the "I want to forgive you, and I want to forget you" scene from The Hills, right now, so there's that.)

So, ironically, I've written this post to say; actually, I'm not sorry for being sorry all the time. Sure, it might annoy you that 19/20 times you probably don't have the faintest clue what I'm apologising for. But if that twentieth time I genuinely hurt you, and the apology I give helps to fix that? Every single one was worth it. So next time you think you've messed up, just send the text, say I'm sorry, and don't try to make it more than it, or blame the person's reaction, or justify it - trust me, I guarantee it will feel better.

Are you a person who apologises?

Sammy xo.

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