It has been a while since I have felt that I’ve legitimately
wronged someone.
I have memories of stupid stuff that I did as a kid, but
generally I’m able to push through that terrible cloudy and lingering feeling
of knowing that I screwed up at someone else’s expense, maybe with the subconscious
intent of damaging or maligning or insulting or disadvantaging them.
Just yesterday I was taught a simile: the separation
between God and man is like the separation between two humans when one wrongs
the other. I immediately thought back to a time in middle school when I created
an elaborate prank call with some friends to another friend – which in short
ended very poorly. Cut to school the next day, and I’m literally chasing the
prank-call-recipient around the halls just to apologize, meanwhile she exerts
every effort to dodge my presence.
But that is old news, because last night I made some jerk moves. My haughty self publicly inferred false things about and to the face of someone I respect.
It came so easily too. I didn’t have to think. Almost like
acting out a scene I had invented instantly but already mastered, I say some
sort of detached comment and “reach out” with a condescending gesture, seal
with a reproachful look, and fin.
In those few moments I write a story, publish it, and grace
its cover with my signature.
But the book is stocked onto a shelf and I move on, until
the morning (praise God that they are new each day) presents me with the
subject of this false biography. The truth confronts my lies, and a pile of my
own books falls onto my heart.
Only then did I really realize the jerk I had been. Maybe I
prefer the “terrible cloudy and lingering feeling” description to a pile of
books… or maybe I want both. A heavy leaden feeling inside and a cloudy
dirtiness all around, and I can’t shake either. But I promise myself to make
things right between us and do my best to restock the books and let my eyes
adjust to the fog.
Now that I realize the likelihood that I would have
ignored-away this situation even by tomorrow, it is a blessing that this friend
reappeared nearly on the hour. My apology is cumbersome and a bit reticent and
certainly lacks the flair of my performance the night before. Naturally I’ll
have to pay for this. I’ve already prepared myself to settle up emotionally at least
as much as the damage I’ve caused.
But I can’t return this book to the publisher; it’s already
been circulated. All I could technically do is write a second novel titled, No, no, for real: Trust this one Instead,
and hope that I have equal success – but not greater, just in case I would
accidentally grow my initial audience.
But the face I plastered on the cover of my own fiction
smiles and says “apology accepted.”
And so I despair.
I run after all the volumes stacked on back shelves so that
I can hide them within my body and cover myself again in the sweet lingering
shield of fog that tells my eyes the sadness in my heart which I deserve and in
which I must remain because I was wrong and I screwed up and I screwed over
someone else whose forgiveness I don’t deserve.
I make it slowly home, unable to look up until I no longer
might meet other eyes with my own. And I sit here musing and typing until
somewhere in the middle I feel these books taken from me. I don’t remember the
title anymore and I don’t think I could give an accurate summary, because I’m
pretty sure they have ceased to become my intellectual property. The paper goes
back to the tree on which my Savior chooses to write another story.
His is a biography worth reading.
