The Dubious Graveyard of “I’m Sorrys” and the Caterwauling Abyss of “I Can’t Help How I Feel”

By Juli

There are things you can never take back. That you can never make right or recover from. Actions that permanently shift the course of life for you and for those around you, for good sometimes, and with others, for bad. It’s cliché. We know it the nanosecond the bad kind is happening. The instant we breathe or speak or touch or feel it into existence, we know we’ve moved a karmic chess piece that forever alters the game. And we are also acutely aware when someone close to us has done the same. The halls of our collective unconscious stand at attention and take note of its arrival or departure or whatever. If you close your eyes right at that moment, you can almost hear the thing escape into eternity. Like the exhale of a soul from the realm of possibility.

I don’t believe that time heals all wounds. I do believe that time gives us perspective and distance enough to see that what was once perceived as a huge gaping crater is now a scratch. But it’s still there. And it probably still hurts when the weather changes from time to time. Maybe I think this because I hold a grudge. Survival instinct. A long memory of what burns so I don’t touch the same hot plate again. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve never met that person who doesn’t hold a grudge. We’re all keeping score. Let’s be real.

So why bother with “I’m Sorry” if you can never make it right again? I’ll tell you why. It’s a place to die. It’s a place to lay down that person you were before the shift, a sacrificial offering to What Once Was and to What Will Be. In my experience, “I’m Sorry” is more for the benefit of the person who did the deed than the one the “I’m Sorry” is directed at. It’s a bridge to the afterlife, an escape hatch to the white light of next steps. It’s the narcissistic cherry on top of fuck-up pie. It’s a catch all that can mean a million different things except for the one thing it should really mean. The thing it needs to mean.

“I’m Sorry” has a formulaic and anticipatory sidekick known as “I Can’t Help How I Feel” or some derivative thereof. It makes sense. We always expect things in twos. The Lone Ranger even had Tonto. No good man travels alone. The same goes for the rhythm of apologies. Like a heartbeat. It’s really two sounds. Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub. The tricuspid and mitral valves and aortic and pulmonic valves volleying back and forth, back and forth. Echo, echo, echo,echo. Like my daughter yells whenever we get to an empty stairwell. Even a five year old knows that the other shoe always drops somewhere, somehow. Wax on, wax off. Tide in, tide out. I’m sorry; It’s not really my fault.

I don’t buy the “can’t help how I feel” defense. It’s right up there with the Twinkie defense. Controlling how you feel is a basic building block of humanity, no? The inability to control how you feel in relation to the actions you take leads to a long list of unsavory personality disorders and antisocial clinical diagnoses. And even figuring generous statistical errors, most people can’t cop out and claim one of those. So really, “I can’t help how I feel” is probably just garden variety whining. A play for sympathy. And it makes me mad that some people actually fall for it.

Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub.