I’ll be honest,

I’m not the easiest teenager.

I say things I’ll regret in the future, I do things that I’ll regret, but I don’t feel it.

I don’t feel regret.

I tell myself that I know, that I will lose my friends, that I will lose my family.

I tell myself I can change, and that I, one day, will break this shell of cruelty and of snide snippets of snarky words, and that I will, one day, be a patron saint of everything that is saintworthy.

I know this has happened before.

My father, as much as I don’t like to talk about him, is, and always will be, the same person.

A lifetime of cruel comments, and cruel actions led him to a cruel life that sat him cruelly sitting split down the center line of his mind, biding his time until he can keep the internal rhyme of his invisible climb to forgiveness afloat, and never say his apologies, but imply them.

Apologies are never implied, they are said, but one thing remains to be said about implied apologies. You can’t say “I’m sorry” at everything, and you can’t start your sentences with I’m sorry, end them with I’m sorry, or pepper I’m sorry through them like they’re coconut on top of a carrot cake.

For instance, I could say “I’m sorry I’ve been so harsh to you with my words, and with my actions. I’ve betrayed your trust in more ways than one, and I’ve berated you with my words, and my heckling attitudes, never thanking you. I’m sorry.”

Although that would be sincere, I would do it again. When you’re sorry, you say you’re sorry, but you never stop doing it. A student, to a teacher, would say I’m Sorry if they talked out of turn, or if the tide of their tale tweaked the teacher’s ear the wrong way, or if it was deemed inappropriate.

I’m sorry for saying all of the things inappropriate that I have said. Some day I will look back on everything with a sunken eye, and realize what I did was just push everybody away. On my deathbed, I will look back and say I’m Sorry to everybody who I ever hurt, to everybody I told off, and to everybody I snapped at for asking a favor.

I’m too afraid to say I was wrong. Part of me, some part that has been pushed back and back, so that I don’t know where it comes from, doesn’t like admitting that he’s wrong. That other half of me wants desperately to apologize, and to admit that I’m wrong. To admit that I’ve always been wrong, and that everyone else is right.