Day Three hundred and four - If summer had its ghosts

Very recently I was asked why I'm always apologizing. And I do say 'I'm sorry' a lot, I'll own up to it. It's something I picked up on some years back, and though do know why how that came to be, it's quite hard to explain. It began when I was dating Sonia, way back in 2015. I've told that story before, so there's no need to go through all that again. But something that was prevalent in that relationship was just how inadequate I felt with her, and was made to feel by her. We were a wrong fit for each other, and that's ok - sometimes you only find out how wrong for one another people really are when they get together, and then start doing things together. During the courtship phase of the relationship, I thought that we really had a good vibe, but soon enough I'd learn that we really didn't. I learned not to share anything with her that mattered to me, be it a song, or a book, or whatever. She made it a point not only to tell me that not only she did not appreciate what it was I happened to share, but she also made me feel stupid for liking it. So that got me on an apology loop, where whatever I did - and it could be something as simple as kissing her goodbye in the morning when I had to leave early - ended up being something that was the worst possible thing to do ever. 'I'm sorry', became a mantra, one that I - unfortunately - never got to do away with. It stayed with me through these years, and just recently I remembered one such situation where I ended up apologizing for... for nothing, really.

Last Sunday when I went for a walk, I ended up walking past the place where my last girlfriend - more like 'girlfriend', if I'm honest - worked. Just up the road from where she works, there's a mall where I worked at almost twenty years ago. Because of its proximity to where she worked, we ended up going there a few times, and I'll always remember us eating gyozas there one afternoon, while outside it was pouring. It wasn't then, and it might have been only a couple of weeks later, but there was this one time when we were there, and we were walking on the top floor, maybe we were going to get something to eat - I don't know. What I do know is that eventually we were approaching where an escalator is, and I did something I do ever since I was a kid, especially because I was quite near the railings that lead up to the escalator, which was to use my index and middle fingers as makeshift legs, running them across the length of the railing, and here and then lifting the fingers, simulating a jump, and then landing, and then, just near the end of the railing where it turned towards the escalator, my fingers picked up the pace, expertly doing a slide and triumphantly jumping to the escalator itself. I did all this completely absent-minded, naturally, thinking nothing of it. I suddenly looked back, and she stood there looking at me, a mix of disbelief and shame on her face. I felt so... jesus, I felt so ashamed of myself. So ashamed for myself. Because I know that look so well she gave me, one of utmost disappointment. It's an old friend of mine by now. I felt deflated, defeated, and - obviously - apologized.

This is why I'm like this. Always apologetic. Sometimes I feel the need to apologize just for breathing. Sometimes I feel the need to apologize just for existing. What else can I say, but I'm sorry?