Patterns · Love and Its Wreckage
Date: 2 April 2026
My son’s mother gave me the best thing I’ve ever had, and that’s him. Then she betrayed me, and we went from making love to breaking it. She told me I was being dramatic, that I was playing the victim. I hated her for that. What I hated more was that she wasn’t wrong. She never really said sorry, and honestly I was in too much pain to have taken it from her anyway. What she regretted wasn’t what she’d done. It was getting caught.
Date: 2 April 2026
I keep telling myself that one of these days I’ll accept the apology I never got. Not for her. For me. I’ve practiced accepting it a lot more times than she ever practiced giving it. I poke at the pain the way you can’t leave a canker sore alone with your tongue. It hurts a little, it’s familiar, and I need it. I bite it until my eyes water, and the pain lingers and swells. And it won’t go away until I stop hurting myself.
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What apology are you still owed, and by whom?
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