Commentary: I’m Sorry
Facebook has made some interesting impacts on my life. It’s reconnected me with friends from all the different phases of my life. I learned that a high school acquaintance (who I remember being really hot) was dead 3 hours after sending him a friend request. For a while there, I was playing Scrabulous (RIP) with my mom via Facebook. We’ve used Facebook to help promote TNG and TNG events. All good stuff. However, I recently had an interaction via Facebook that was pretty disturbing.
A few months ago, I received a friend request on Facebook from someone with a familiar name and face. I knew that this guy was someone from where I grew up and so I assumed that we went to school together. But I had no recollection of exactly where or when. Was he in wood shop with me in 7th grade? Or perhaps he was in my senior year civics class. I had no idea. But it was apparent that we went to school together at some point, so I clicked “Confirm” and went about my business. I hadn’t heard a thing from this guy until this past week when I got a Facebook Chat message from him. It all started off fine for a while as we exchanged pleasantries, and then it got weird. “Michael, I’ve been thinking a lot about you recently, off and on for the past few years. I really want to talk to you some time. On the phone. Do you think we could talk sometime?”
My heart started racing, my legs felt heavy, a lump formed in my throat. What the hell does this guy have to say to me?
At first, I agreed that we could talk on the phone. He was about to leave it at that and asked me for my phone number. I was slightly relieved to be on the edge of ending the chat, but also crazy with curiosity about what this guy had to say to me after something like 15 years of no contact with me. I planned on dodging his request for my number or possibly giving him a fake one. But then I realized that there was no easy way out. But there was no way I was talking with him on the phone. I just couldn’t bear the thought of hearing the voice of some former classmate I haven’t spoken to in over a decade as he tells me things that have been on his mind for a few years now.
Am I appropriately conveying how awkward and anxiety-inspiring this situation was?
I started imagining all sorts of things that this guy could say to me. Perhaps he’s had a secret crush on me since high school? Maybe he raped me in the showers during gym class and I blocked it out? What other sort of unspeakable thing might have happened that I didn’t remember? I needed to find out what the hell he had to say, and there was no way I was going to wait for an awkward phone call.
I sucked it up and sent him some more text: “Actually, man, to perfectly honest with you, we’re not going to talk on the phone. If you have something you need to say to me, you need to do it via email or through a chat program.” I could feel the relief coming. He found this surprising (!?!) and told me that he really wanted to tell me in his own voice and not over some textual computer medium. I told him he could tell me via computer or not at all, so he shared with me his deep and dark secret then and there, on a Wednesday morning while I was at my desk at work.
Turns out he wanted to apologize to me for being mean to me. In Junior High. Over 20 years ago.
When I asked him for specifics, he replied that he’d been drinking a lot over the past two decades and couldn’t really remember any. I admitted that I too had had my fair share of booze in the past and couldn’t really place him in any particular class or time. But he was the one who was thinking about me. And according to him, he started thinking about me like 3 years ago, way before the Facebook-sponsored reunion between the two of us. You’d think he’d have remembered something concrete. Nope. Just a general feeling that he owed me an apology for being mean to me in 7th grade.
I let him make his peace, and asked a few more questions to try to figure out where and when we had any sort of relationship. We couldn’t pin down a single shared memory. Not one. Once he got his point across, it was my turn.
I spent the next 10 minutes giving him an eye-full, so to speak, telling him how very selfish he was being. He said I misunderstood, and that he was being self-less and cleansing his conscience. And I replied that he was doing it in a very selfish way. Who gave him the right to interrupt my life, 20 years after some random yet unremembered wrong-doing, on a Wednesday morning, to dump all his emotional baggage in my lap? How could he not see the potential damage that could be caused by him going around ripping open old wounds? I told him that, in the future, he might be better off writing his apologies down on a piece of paper and then burning it, sending his apologetic intentions into the ether.
Perhaps this guy is going through the dreaded Step 9 of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, where he has to atone for his past misdeeds. (A quick google search showed me a story of someone doing just that, and subsequently getting arrested for the rape for which he apologized, committed 20-some years earlier.) Or perhaps he’s just doing some other sort of soul-cleansing. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that he’s going through AA right now and somehow I ended up on his “I’m Sorry” list. Well, Bryan, take me off. I was doing just fine before hearing from you again.
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couldn’t you just have said “thanks” and left it at that?
Ouch. Why not let the guy off easy?
Sobering up, getting one’s life back together, and repenting for past mistakes are difficult –and admirable– steps. It seems that a few minutes of patience and a polite acknowledgment on your part aren’t too much to ask.
a tiny bit of humanity can go a long way in making the world a little more livable.
i agree with the other three commenters. i think it was a little selfish on your part to attack someone and make them feel like shit (i assume) just because they confused you. unless there’s something that talking to him triggered in you that you’re not letting us know about in this post.
ditto. i have definitely been apologized to for being treated like shit throughout school by random people years later. what does it hurt to accept the apology and let it go? leave the bitterness back in middle school along with the ignorant behavior.
What a prick he is for contacting you to make amends. The nerve of some people! I hope he’s drowning his sorrows in a fifth of vodka like he deserves.
At least you’ve proved you’re the bigger man by posting this and belittling his attempts at recovery.
There was a really funny episode of This American Life that dealt with this exact issue. I am trying to find the podcast to share it with you.
The real reason I wanted to comment is to agree that Facebook, while useful, has gotten totally out of hand. I feel like it has the power to make and destroy relationships. At the very least it’s just kind of creepy.
Well, the guy has to deal with the fact that a simple apology will not always be accepted and may exacerbate the offense. Michael has every right to reject this person.
I got the impression Michael is angry that this person reached out to manipulate him for his own selfish redemption. After all AA is just another cult. Instead of being addicted to booze you’re now addicted to “recovery” without ever having addressed the origin of what caused your alcoholism in the first place. You just move on to the process and structure of abstinence…and depend on that instead.
So, yeah Michael seems hostile but the guy seems kinda stupid to never have gotten counseling for that guilt.
And Facebook blows. Don’t know about you but I don’t need to be contacted by everyone I lost contact with. I lost those contacts for good reason.
I did group therapy for a while–yea yea yea–but one of the things I took away from it was this:
If it’s causing you a deep, visceral reaction, then it’s for a reason, usually (sigh) Mom/Dad or something in childhood.
So I guess, as much as this guy needed to clear the air to clear his conscience, maybe you need to figure out why it bothered you so much. You said it yourself: old wounds were ripped open.
I also think we need to be forgiving of this sort of thing in general. He was trying to live truthfully, and make up for times when he felt he wasn’t being a good person or true to himself. As we come out of the closet, isn’t that what we’re trying to do? And how many times have we, the queers, been asked why we felt we had to get it off our chest?
Wow. impressive. you’ve basically just proven that despite being a new sort of gay you’re just like the old, i.e., snide and hateful.
I also like how everyone’s comments are anonymous for fear of exclusion from a clique that’s only different from the rest of the gays from its music selection.
hateful. old. queens.
couldn’t have said it better myself j. more like the same old gay.
I guess trolls are an inevitable part of the success of a blog, as we are learning here.
So Michael was really creeped out by a rather strange encounter and reacted in a way that, with your 20/20 hindsight, you don’t fully agree with. That makes him a hateful old queen? Cut him some slack.
Guilt does some weird things to people (ok, duh). Certainly the honest contemplation of my own role as a predator in the jungle politics of childhood is pretty unpleasant… okay I just did for a few minutes and feel pretty shitty. Live and learn I guess.
As far as AA goes, describing it as a cult or a place where people get “addicted to recovery” is a pretty big oversimplification. Certainly there are cultish aspects, and I’m willing to bet there’d be a lot of creepy people there, and people who cling to the idea of the recovery process in unhealthy ways. But the reality is that having an unhealthy attachment to alcoholic abstinence is a hell of a lot better than having an unhealthy attachment to alcohol consumption.
So yes, AA may cause some craziness every once in a while, but on the whole I think it’s a great organization that has obviously done a lot of good for a lot of people.
J and Anon #Whatever:
I like how you blame Michael’s moment of unfriendliness on him being gay. Progressive. It’s like all those time I flip people on the highway: me being old gay. Or the times I get annoyed at people who pile their groceries in my face on the bus: me being old gay. Oh, and the times I throw my glitter-boaed, Madonna-singing Chihuahua at every slow poke on the sidewalk: I’m so old gay!
Can’t gays have a bad moment without it being because they’re some some kind of disgruntled queenie-bopper?
I’ve been reading this blog for a long time. I’ve found it generally interesting and I like the diversity of topics that are written about.
That is, for the exception of the articles written by Michael. All of them are whiny. All. Of. Them.
In my book, whenever someone approaches to right a wrong, we should gracefully accept the amends. Someday, we’ll all have to try to make up for something we’ve done wrong, and I for one want the good Karma stored up.
Yes, its true that we apologize to make ourselves feel better sometimes, but that’s the very type of human instinct we – particularly we queer folks – should encourage. It’s a very lucky thing that apologizing makes us feel better, because it encourages us to treat others well and to examine our past.
I hope you reconsider and reach out to him – to apologize. And I hope it makes you feel better.
Re: Aidan
“…the reality is that having an unhealthy attachment to alcoholic abstinence is a hell of a lot better than having an unhealthy attachment to alcohol consumption.”
You’re missing the point. While an addiction to recovery is indeed better than addiction to alcohol both are mere symptoms of a deeper problem that “recovery” ignores. Recovery works because it is designed to appeal to the obsessive addicted personality. What it cannot do is delve into WHY a person is an addict and how to address that issue.
Anon,
I have a three-fold addiction to health, happiness, and emotional stability. Please help me find the underlaying problem behind these terrible addictions which are making me a functioning member of society.
If we don’t address this deeper issue, then I might continue my bad habit of apologizing when I think I may have caused someone harm.
It is true that this was self-serving but is that so bad? I think a little humanity would have gone a long way.
The other night I bumped into my ex who I had not seen in quite some time, and whom I am just starting to recover from. We had a NASTY break-up in which I was essentially continually lied to (actions speak louder then words), extorted, and cheated on. Seeing him brought back a lot of emotion and I said some things that weren’t in my best judgment. I thought about sending him an apology, but realized that it would only be self-serving. Also, had I thought that he would treat my apology with dignity, I would have been more apt to send it.
So, while writing this is self-serving as well, my point is that had I felt that my apology would be met with a dignified answer, I would be more apt to apologize.
Not apologizing is having a profoundly negative effect on me, so I understand his desire to get this off of his chest, self-serving or not. I compromised a bit of my “higher ground” and maybe you did, too…
Not giving some guy you don’t remember your phone number is perfectly fine, but how hard would it have just been to have said “Um, Well, I certainly don’t remember your being mean to me in junior high, but if you think you were, well thanks for the apology.”
Nice and simple, and then he is out of your life. Nothing is gained by accusing him of being selfish. Just let him deal with his own demons.
Re: Aidan…
“…having an unhealthy attachment to alcoholic abstinence is a hell of a lot better than having an unhealthy attachment to alcohol consumption.”
How catholic of you to miss the point entirely. Replacing alcoholism with abstinence is not “recovery” but a substitution of one addiction for another. It is going after a symptom, not the problem. The problem is the cause of the dependency, not what form it takes.
To say one is “recovered” from addiction when it is only recovery dogma keeping them clean is a complete elision of what the problem of dependency actually is.
The Church of Recovery is neither.
Mark,
Did I not acknowledge that the attachment to the idea of recovery can be unhealthy? I stand by my point that such a condition is indeed better than being an active alcoholic.
Furthermore, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that in many cases alcoholism has a large genetic component. By what method do you propose to go after that “cause of the dependency?”
Are all these physicians and mental health experts just wrong when they say that on the whole, AA is the way to go for many alcoholics? I guess I’m confused about what your main point is.
I was thinking exactly the same as Aiden’s last comment – if alcoholism has genetic ties, you can hardly go after some other root. Another way to put it – if someone takes medicine for clinical depression, thus “abstaining” from sadness and anxiety, are they no better than if they just lived with the feelings of depression and searched for the root of their chemical imbalances??
Mark,
Gave it a bit more thought, and I think I understand more clearly now what your position is. You seem to be saying that alcohol abuse is always caused by some separate, underlying condition, whether it be depression, anxiety, internalized homophobia, or what have you. In any case, alcohol becomes a “crutch” to ease the underlying pain of this other, separate condition. You are certainly correct in saying that this sometimes happens, but this is not what alcoholism is.
Alcoholism is a disease whereby one is unable (in most circumstances) to drink in moderation. They can’t just have 2-3 (or 4…5…or 6…) drinks and call it an evening. For the most part, they drink until they pass out or run out of booze, an occurrence which causes them a great deal of distress and will often leave them going to great measures to acquire more alcohol. Usually, before they start drinking, they make sure they have enough alcohol that this won’t happen. These are the people who are alcoholics, the people AA is designed to help.
Whether you agree with it or not, the disease based model is the one which, by large consensus within the scientific community, is currently taught in medical schools. No matter how psychologically healthy they may be otherwise, the alcoholic is constitutionally unable to consistently use alcohol in a moderate, healthy way. Perhaps one day a cure (via gene therapy or some other technique) will be discovered to help these people, but as of right now the best thing for these people is abstinence.
Your characterization of AA as some euphoria inducing addictive cult is inaccurate. What it does is serve as a method of reminding people that they suffer from a disease (from which there is no cure) whereby they have to be on their guard to never take a sip of alcohol. Otherwise, they may grow complacent in their sobriety and forget how dangerous that path is. Ben recently blogged about his experience with nicotine; it’s the same deal here. You never gain control of the beast, you always have to tell it no.
“…there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that in many cases alcoholism has a large genetic component.”
Evidence that suggests “a large genetic component” in addiction, while important, is not conclusive. If indeed such evidence is conclusive please educate me.
To suggest that a genetic predisposition is destiny ignores the fact that, regardless of biological propensity, addiction arises out of circumstances that are dysfunctional and environmentally conducive to dependency.
If biology is destiny are all Black people inevitably consigned to a struggle with diabetes and sickle cell anemia? Certainly not; research on diet, nutrition and advances in modern medicine have made those diseases avoidable and/or manageable. However, one can convincingly argue the circumstances of bigotry (such as marginalization in ghettos with little or no infrastructure; compromised access to healthcare, education, opportunity; and predatory fast food marketing) have produced environments that exploit genetic difference (that might have remained unexpressed) and a predisposition to disease.
If biology is destiny should we round up all individuals genetically pre-determined to be at risk for addiction and disease and put them all in “re-education” camps or recovery programs by default at age 18?
Recovery programs are necessary and produce in most desired results. They are not the full answer.
ben43 – i would disagree that alcoholism/addiction must be linked to some circumstance. are smokers addicted to smoking because of a circumstance or because their bodies crave nicotine?
Ben43,
You are right to point out that having a biological predisposition to alcoholism is different from being an alcoholic. A certain amount of drinking is also involved in developing the condition.
You are also right to point out that individuals who live in certain environments are more likely to get that heavy drinking exposure. The typical college campus or gay ghetto would be excellent examples of environments which are conducive to this.
However, once alcoholism has developed, it’s there for good. There is no magic cure, no transportal to happier, less dysfunctional life circumstances, which would enable them to once again drink in moderation.
It’s a disease, it’s there for life, and abstinence is the best answer.
I’ll go ahead and respond to what also seems to be on your mind: Gay people are more likely to become alcoholics because of dysfunctional/environmentally conducive circumstances. True.
The stresses of coming out and the fact that most gay social life involves alcohol are both big factors which contribute to the development of alcoholism. But these are just things which give water to the seeds already there.
“…are smokers addicted to smoking because of a circumstance or because their bodies crave nicotine?”
The question of causation is also one of probability. One is not born craving nicotine; smoking is a learned behavior, popularized by diligent marketing and cultural factors.
Individuals with a genetic predispostion for tobacco addiction may never realize that propensity. However, those raised in circumstances favorable to smoking (i.e. around friends or family members who smoke) are generally more likely to develop the same habit.
A person with a family history of diabetes or heart disease, and therefore a genetic predisposition to develop said diseases, is not necessarily pre-destined to present with those conditions. Unless that person also has the incredible misfortune to be born a Calvinist.
Genotype is not phenotype.
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