Stretched Out Neckhole

Been attending some meetings on the 9th Step.  The face-to-face, I'm-going-to-do-better Step.

Apology: A regretful acknowledgement of an offense or a failure.

Amends: Compensate or make up for a wrongdoing. 

Both of these are important.  I believe that part of the 9th Step process is the uncomfortable face-to-face "I'm sorry."  This makes the Step personal.  It makes it a lot harder.  It also makes me aware of all the empty, meaningless "I'm sorries" I trotted out when I was drinking.  What I meant was more along the lines of "I'm sorry I got caught.  I'm sorry that I'm feeling miserable right now."  Beyond that I wasn't sorry for shit.  It's revealing that the definition of an apology indicates that it's just an acknowledgement of the offense and that includes the word "regretful."  A feeling of regret reminds me of not being able to attend a wedding because you'll be out of town.  It's a mild, spineless, gutless word.

There's a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza thought he was due an amends from a character who was working on Step 9.  This guy had refused to let George borrow a cashmere sweater because he was afraid that it would be stretched out.  Instead of a heartfelt and sincere apology he got this: "I'm sorry I was worried that your somewhat large and bulbous head was going to stretch out the neck hole of my finely knit sweater."  That was my kind of amends right there.

The rubber really hits the road with the changing the behavior part of the Step, the living differently part.  It's not a very effective apology if you simply keep doing the offensive thing.  This part doesn't sing until you do the face-to-face thing  . . .  which is hollow unless you change your behavior.

I think I'm trapped in another maze of circular logic so I just do both of them.