i’m sorry for being so incredibly self involved that it never even occured to me that you might be lonely. i’m so sorry. if i could change things now, i certainly would. i’m 20 years too late. i loved you with everything i am.
Submitted by: Nebraska
I’m sorry to all this will reach. Because my destruction has been so widespread. I’m sorry for the drinking, the drugs, the rampant monogamy. I’m especially sorry for those of you who stayed in the trailer park when you knew the tornado was coming. I’m sorry my daughter misses her daddy. I’m sorry I fall so often, and crush those who love me. I’m sorry I take so long to get up. I’m not sorry that I’ve failed at everything I’ve done. I am sorry I never really tried. I’m truly sorry, from Nebraska to Brooklyn.
Submitted by: Uncle Moe Jr.
Hey, I’m sorry, but she was my girlfriend first. I didn’t mean for anything to happen, but you know how she can be when she decides she wants someone, and we had some unfinished business. I don’t think it caused your subsequent break-up. I am pretty sure that she was well on her way to that already.
It has been 20 years since it happened, but I have always felt bad that it happened, and I am sorry.
Wild Bill, tonight I attempted to make your cucumber dish, the one you
always made for the 4th, and remembered you holding the slices up to
the light to show off your chef-knife skills. Look there, see right
through it, you’d say. I’m sorry I got annoyed being your audience,
when you were always mine. I’m sorry for every conversation I backed
out of. I’m sorry for never learning knots or how to make the potato
dish. I’m sorry for not writing down the stories. I’m sorry that
when I see you tomorrow, when I see you get confused by the
conversations that you no longer understand, I will want to leave
early. I think you are the only person who saw me clearly and loved me
clearly and I am heartbroken now because you are leaving me right
before my eyes. –Ree-becca
I am a journalist. Over the years, I have written a lot of things that
pissed some people off. Some of the time, I had no choice. Some of the
time, these people had it coming and I consider what I did a service
to them. But other times, I might have gone a little hard on some
people for the benefit of my articles and in attempt to please my
boss. I don’t wish to mention any names, but I am thinking of a few
public-relations people and a few well-known people in business, in
sports, and believe it or not, a rabbi or two. The media is a strange
thing, a big ocean full of currents. Sometimes you get sucked under.
Submitted by: AJ
I am sorry to Kathy who, when we were both 7, I violated by shoving a handful of mud into her mouth. I did this because she was trying to steal my friend away from our fort building to her house to play dolls. I should have used words to let her know that I wasn’t happy with her. I will never forget how upset she looked with mud in her mouth and how base this made me feel.
Submitted by: Susan
Natalie: I want to apologize that my sisters and I made you feel unwelcome at Meredith’s wedding. We had no intention of doing so. We were all nervous and caught up in the day — worried it would go well; awkward in our stiff clothes. It was the first wedding at our house and the bride was full of nerves and commands and Ellen and I, bridesmaids both, were her lackeys — on call and on edge ourselves. But I know what it’s like to be the odd man out — it happens in a family of three girls often, and in high school I went through the same rigorous shunning that you did. I wish I had had the presence of mind to reach out to you more. Our mothers are close so the thought was that we should be too — and though our relationship has known some strain over the years, I do feel close to you and your sister and think of you both often with fond memories, hope, and affection.
Submitted by: Amy
Mark W: That fall month was among the happiest of my life and your presence in the adjacent room helped make it so. I can’t tell you how wide-open grateful I’ll be for that for the rest of my life: Revisiting it and its particular magic is important to my days even now, nearly three years later. I continue to regret that my stress and confusion overwhelmed us — me — once we were back in the city, that I simply couldn’t give you the attention and availability you wanted and deserved. I had so little generosity in me for new love, for the risk and work involved, so I retracted, held hard to who and what I knew, criticized…. Our timing was damning. Still, every fall I remember us there sunk in those gold trees, remember what a gift you gave me.
Submitted by: AG
I am sorry that I lobbied so hard to get my ex husband Peter to marry me. When I asked him to leave 6 years later, I realized that he was right to be so reluctant. We were not good for each other.
Submitted by: Susan