ihavebeenfloated

I’ve always had a problem with sincerity. I’ve been called smarmy by people really close to me. I guess I am hopelessly insincere. I’ve never really known what it is like to feel really deeply genuinely bad about something. Kinda weird for me to admit to that now. Every time I have hurt someone, I’ve managed to feel somewhat justified, so even if I felt bad for the person, I never really felt sorry.

Lately I’ve been running into a lot of situations where even though I feel bad and say I’m sorry, no one believes I am honestly sorry, and I guess I can’t blame them. It’s an awful sheep who cried wolf situation but it’s never really resulted in any situations where I feel honestly awful, until now.

I wrote something about Trista on Facebook this afternoon. I was in a rush and the thoughts were fresh in my head, so I just slammed it out, linked it to her profile, and posted it. I didn’t think about it for a second, and I hope, for my own sake, that if I had taken just a minute to think it over, I wouldn’t have posted it. I don’t know if that is true, I guess we’ll find out in the future.

But, it hurt her, and it seemed to hurt her really deep. She pulled out the “well I’m sorry I thought I could trust you” card and then, right then, I felt like I had run over a cat. I tried to say a few things, like, no one read it (and no one did, really), and I look like an ass, too, and etc, etc.

But what are my apologies worth? When has anyone known me to actually feel bad about something? Just last night, a common joke, Trista said, “Since when do you feel?” It just goes all ways…

It’s not often that my words are useless. There is nothing that can be said to apologize for what I did, or at least nothing that I can say and be believed. So, I feel neutered. I didn’t mean to hurt her, which makes me feel like crap enough, but then I’ve got the fact that there is nothing I can say to make it better. Just completely neutered, rendered
helpless.

But then I had a thought: don’t people like to get stuff? I mean, traditionally, isn’t there like flowers or something you give to a woman you’ve wronged? I’d say, and I haven’t got any experience at all in this case, presents make things better. Right? I feel so misguided saying all this, like, isn’t this shallow and superficial? Is there nothing better I can do? No, no there isn’t.

And then I think: I have never, ever, ever felt bad enough about something to actually take action. When my words fail, I just give up. No one is important enough to cost me my time and money. This is different. I don’t really know why, but Trista feels really important to me, like, the thought of fucking up our new relationship feels kinda like spitting in the eyes of a diety. How do you do that and live with yourself?

So, then, I thought about things I know Trista really wants, and then I bought her something (and Christ, it wasn’t cheap), to make good, to make her know I am sincere and I do feel bad. I haven’t seen her yet, so I don’t know how she’s going to react to it.

Maybe it won’t make a difference, maybe it will. I hope it does, because this is a learning experience for me. If it doesn’t go over well, that’s going to tell me I wasted my time trying and I’ll probably never do this again. That’s sad, I don’t want that.

Sincerely.