reflex

(originally posted July 12, 2022)

Content Warning: Suicidal Ideation

I am a recovering apology addict. I have spent the past half-decade coming to slowly understand this and I turned 30 this month. Thank you for your understanding.

Growing up, I learned to say “sorry” whenever possible.

I learned that it was good and proper to take personal responsibility for things. That was “The Mature Thing To Do”. In reality, there is a lot of nuance to this, and a lot of it relies upon coming to a deeper understanding of what you do or do not actually have influence over. But I’ve got that all-or-nothing, black-and-white, heaven-or-hell (let’s rock) brain.

If something went wrong, it was cause for apologies, bowing, kowtowing. Sorry, I messed up. I take full responsibility. I promise I’ll try to do better next time. Sorry.

If something went right… well, that A grade could have been an A+, right? Right isn’t the same as perfect. I’ll try to reach perfection next time. There has to be room for improvement somewhere. If I become complacent - think that just “right” is good enough - I’ll never improve. Sorry.

Even if it wasn’t anything related to what I did, it was just the easy thing to say. A convenience.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“I’m sorry I was late.”
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted you, but could you…”

“Sorry, did that make sense?”
“I didn’t mean to cause problems, sorry…”
“Sorry, I lost us that match.”
“I’m ruining the mood, sorry…”
“Sorry again for bothering you, but…”

But this is still too many words; boil it all down to just the one. When I tried to learn how to write (I’m still learning), I learned that brevity is (generally) good. At a conference, Desiree Burch taught me a really powerful exercise, which involved taking a certain amount of time to write/talk through a concept, and then progressively whittling down that time until you have a matter of seconds to say it. We all went from irreverent to weeping in 15 minutes.

Cut to the heart of things. With the right tone, you can express a whole concept in a single word.

“Sorry.” It became my catchphrase.

I think there was nuance to what I meant once. I do not think there was any left by the time I was through with it.

Sorry. That’s not quite true. There was nuance, but with the breadth of options excised. Over time, every instance of me speaking the word came to mean the same, somewhat complex concept. When I said “sorry”, the reflexive apology, the Deep Sorry, what I actually meant was:

I know, with every fiber of my being, that my existence brings you suffering. Every interaction with me evokes within you negative emotions along the spectrum of mere annoyance to active anger and disgust. My mere presence is at best tolerated and usually actively despised. Were I to truly value such concepts as the greater good, self-sacrifice, or compassion, I would kill myself, removing a tiny evil from this world, and my failure to do so thus far is a cowardly, selfish act. Your continued acknowledgement of my existence, however minuscule, is in itself a profound act of saintly effort wasted upon a lowly individual as myself. Though this plea be desperate, undesired, and arrogant, I beg you not abandon me, though you would be correct to do so. Permit me to parasitize you, to extort a morsel of undeserved companionship, for it is the only pleasure other than masturbation which I possess in my miserable life.

Sorry. That got a bit long.

When I said “sorry”, what I meant was, “I’m sorry for existing. Neither of us chose this.”

Anyway, it turns out, when you verbally cut yourself often enough, people start to notice, and it makes them uncomfortable. I was only vaguely aware of this until I met people who did the same thing. It was a real “Why is the ‘Most Dangerous Animal’ exhibit at the zoo a mirror?” moment. I felt silly, but I still kept saying it. I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t understand.

It was September 2018, and I was trying to sleep on a bus going from the Writing Excuses Retreat to the airport. After spending the entire NASA tour day before the conference in rain-drenched clothes, I caught a cold the first actual conference day and felt miserable the entire week. I stayed in my room as much as possible, giving myself horrible heartburn by drinking lemon-ginger tea nonstop. Someone tried to get me thrown off the ship, and while they were probably justified (even in those pre-coronavirus times), I still think they were an asshole about it. I apologized profusely to everyone, especially the instructors.

I was trying to sleep on the bus. The congestion was only just lifting. I’d wanted an aisle seat to try and get in some last good discussions with other attendees, but my deep fear of being late to anything meant I was one of the first to board, and I was too exhausted to speak. The window was pleasantly cold. I overheard a conversation from a few rows down between Mary Robinette Kowal and (I think?) Alyshondra Meacham.

They talked about how saying “sorry” repeatedly, without cause, is an aggressive act. It pushes the other person onto the defensive, because socially, how does one respond to “sorry”? There’s “I forgive you”, which only really works when there’s something to forgive and the forgiveness is warranted. The other big answer is, “oh, it’s okay”, which is a complete lie said only to try and avoid further social awkwardness.

Because it’s not okay, is it? Now you’re being held accountable for how they’re acting. If you say it’s okay, then you might as well be telling them to keep doing it. If you say to stop, then comes the “sorry for saying sorry” rush attack, like you’re trying to fight Depressed Star Platinum. The situation inevitably escalates, because you end up looking like a jerk to anyone watching. What kind of monster would be so mean to someone just apologizing and trying their best to make good?

When “sorry” means “I’m sorry for existing”, there are no right responses. This is absolutely the desired effect, but it’s completely unintentional. I’ve used this weapon myself, so I know how it twists the brain. When I said “sorry” in this way, I felt genuinely terrible, like it was the only thing I could say to justify why I was such a fuck-up, regardless of the context. What I was actually doing was holding people at social gunpoint, the gun loaded with bullets made of toxic shame, forcing them to bear a portion of my burden against their will. I was curling up and stabbing them with my hedgehog quills.

People got so mad with me when I did this, and when they did, I simply became more depressed. I didn’t understand. In hindsight, I can understand what they were probably trying to convey. They meant, “You must stop saying you are sorry for existing, because your existence has an inherent positive value,” or some other equally true-if-trite statement. But the Deep Sorry was too overwhelming. It plugged my ears as I sank deeper.

You must understand, I knew. At the time, I knew that whole stupid paragraph contained within the reflexive apology to be obviously, objectively true. To be told it wasn’t so bold-facedly, so off-handedly, felt insulting, belittling, infuriating. To apologize to someone and then be told to stop was to be denied even the right to have feelings. In those times when I’m drowning deep in toxic shame, other people merely reaching for the surface to gasp for air feels like toxic positivity.

I finally began drifting off against the window. The conversation continued, and someone said that almost every time the word “sorry” is spoken, it would be better served to be replaced with a variation of “thank you”.

I mentally made the swap, just to try it out. “I’m sorry for existing.”

It took me a few minutes.

The best I could come up with was, “Thank you for tolerating me.” I thought it sounded kind of stupid. I fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the bus driver tried to park where they shouldn’t have and crashed into an air conditioning unit.

It took time, but I started to see these things; understand exactly why my friends would get annoyed with me when I acted, well, the way I’d always been acting. I started to get annoyed when people did it to me. I thought about the things I have written down here.

These days, I put forth an active effort to make the swap whenever I have the urge to say “sorry”. Instead of a reflexive attack in self-defense, “thank you” is an admission of vulnerability. If I feel like I screwed up somehow, it allows me to still express that feeling, but without writing it on a bullet first. If someone says “you’re welcome” or “it’s alright” responding to a “thank you”, they can actually mean it. It allows them to feel a bit better about themselves.

I couldn’t tell you if anything has changed within me. I still feel all of the self-loathing and shame roiling inside of me. I still say “sorry” by reflex, the word creaking under the implication; my filters don’t catch every instance. Old habits.

What has changed, slowly, is that people get upset with me less often. They aren’t scolding me to stop apologizing if I’m not technically apologizing, and I feel better when people aren’t getting on my case. More charitably, it means they don’t have to walk on eggshells around me (as much). I think (hope). I still wish everyone would lay off me sometimes, but the reasons have shifted.

Do they notice the swap? I don’t know. I still haven’t shaken the baseline assumption that everyone secretly hates me and will drop me the first chance they get. Plus, now I’ve become the kind of person who gets annoyed when confronted with the reflexive apology, even with everything I’ve written here. I still don’t know what to do with that. Let me know if you figure it out.

Thanks for reading.

—Noah Chan, Monday 20 June 2022