A Retraction

I am gonna wake up with a splitting headache in the morning. Quite simply cos I'm having a liquid dinner tonight. But hey - there's mango juice in it so can't say I'm not keeping to my fibre intake. Plus the ginger from the ginger ale - definitely good for my digestion. As for the vodka - it's been said to reduce harmlful agents residing in the body. And THAT is what we need tonight. Though blogging might not be the suitable company for it, but hell - it was blogging that got us here in the first place.

I was informed today that something I wrote during the course of last week, has brought hurt to people I call my friends. Now, I have to say - I'm a linguistic person i.e. words, phrases, statements, tend to stick in my head like a fly to fly-paper. And I mull over it as if its some great secret brew, and before the gases explode, I empty it out here on my blog. Ben calls this my virtual shrink (which is probably why he doesn't come here at all). 

I used to use this space as an in-your-face / read-em-and-wept and needless to say, it did as 'twas intended. Afterall, a close friend did draw this picture of a gravestone in my high school autograph book and wrote under it "If your words were poison, I'd be lying under here by now." But over time, I have come to learnt the furtility of it. If I have something to say - I'd rather say it in person. Sure, this may be my drafting board, but the steam of the fury is not here anymore.

As doctors [and parents] we can't undo our mistakes, 

and we rarely forgive ourselves for them.

But, it's a hazard of the trade.

Which is why I'm aghast to learn that a thought shared by two very good friends with a long history, could be taken out of context in this virtual world and made personal. Now I have written before of Mandy, and who she is in my life. Here is a friend I know would love me for this lifetime and 3 others (even if I do not make her the dimsum she favours!), and the one person I would not mistake her care and concern as "pity for the poor single mummy." Which was why when she made the comment of the men in her god-daughter's life thus far, I knew that it was pointed in the same direction as mine - the one who started it all, the one who caused the tip of the scale.

But, as human beings we can always try to do better. 

To be better. To right a wrong. 

Even when it feels irreversible.

We thought we saw him the other day while out about town. If only I had such luck! And honestly, there are days, especially when I'm uploading pictures of the kids, that I am so tempted to attach one to an email and send it off to him with a note saying "Here's what you're missing out on!" But truthfully, it's not been done not cos I lack the guts, but simply cos it's not worth it. People shouldn't have to be made to realise what they have thrown away. True satisfaction comes when they realise it themselves.

Of course, "I'm sorry" doesn't always cut it. 

Maybe because we use it so many different ways. 

As a weapon. As an excuse. 

I do wish most times that I didn't walk around, carrying this deeply rooted hatred in my heart for the one person who not only made an utter and complete mess of my life, but the lives of my kids and everyone else after. I wish he didn't ruin me to the point that now when I get an email from Ben at 4 in the afternoon, I am left suspiciously wondering "What the hell is he doing on his email at this working hour?!" I wish he didn't shatter all possibility of me ever hoping for anything BUT pain and misery in life - exactly the way he left me, that everyone else had to bear the brunt of it.

I could wish for many things tonight that has everything to do with driving jaggered-edge daggers over and over and over again, drawing pain of the highest possible level. Just So.

But in between all that, the one thing that I do wish for was that I was not so broken a person that the one who put me back together again, was broken in the process as well. Which is the only justification and rationale I can draw as to how "you're welcome to keep in touch with them" could be read as "stay away for ever." That I said it to you so many times in the past, it's all you can ever recall and deign to remember in association with me.

But, when we are really sorry, when we use it right. 

When we mean it. 

When our actions say what words never can. 

I'm not a bad person and I'm not hiding behind the excuse of a motherhen trying to protect her brood. I did what I thought was right but on hindsight it was tunnel-visioned to a high extent. I only took into account what my lil girl would go through and didn't quite give a care for the adults. And what I took into account for my lil girl was all the lessons that life had given me 6 years ago. 

I cannot expect and do not expect to redeem myself through this one retraction of sorts. But you were not there, having to pull her away from the front door after waiting for hours on a no-show. And you were not there, for the times we held ourselves together as best as we could - just she and I. You may have been there to salvage what you could, but the damage was already done. Just writing it out down here is making me feel so wretched as if it was happening All Over Again. Yes, it is that deep.

But in saying all this, we are not likening you to the other. We're just saying it was someplace we didn't like, still don't and we would do everything within our power to not go back there again. 

In my favourite series of Grey's Anatomy, it was said that when you get it right, it is the most perfect thing to say. That when you get it right, it is redemption.

And so it is said here - I'm sorry if I had hurt you Pups. Twas never my intention. Especially not after you tried to be all the king's horses and all the king's men at the same time in piecing the humpty-dumpties back together again.