Second chances…our moms all warned us about them. We’re only supposed to give them out to people who truly deserve them, people who earn them. “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”. Fool me twice and I should have thought harder about giving you the second chance. But I didn’t I never do. I don’t even think that hard when you ask for a third or fourth chance. Hell, you probably didn’t even ask me for another chance. I just wanted you to have it.

Walking away is, I think, the hardest thing that anyone has ever had to do. Walking away is harder than watching someone else leave. Knowing when to leave is the easy part, but knowing how sucks. So I never leave, I never left. I’d stay even when they didn’t ask me. My friendships and relationships were toxic because of it.

So this is my apology to all the people in my life who won’t be getting a second chance. The problem with never walking away is that you get hurt over and over and over again. People prove you wrong more often than not. They prove that they didn’t deserve their second, third, whatever chance

We don’t want conflict. We avoid it at all costs. We don’t want pain. We avoid that at all costs too. Accepting that something which was once so beautiful is now gone is the key to walking away but doing that takes so much strength that some of us never find it. So here are all my apologies:

My apology to the girl from high school that I gave a second chance to. Freshman orientation we met and I got a bad vibe about you. I had a feeling that you were, to be frank, a bitch. But I decided to give you a chance despite my gut. I was wrong and I’m sorry that I even gave you that chance in the first place. I’m sorry that I wasted both of our time in trying to be friends. We succeeded for a while but at the end of the day my gut feeling was right and you were a bully.

To the girl who spread rumors about me before I even got to my new school, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I was naïve enough to believe that you had matured. I’m sorry that you felt so insecure that you needed to make up lies about me to secure your social standing. And I’m sorry that summer of sophomore year I was dumb enough to call you my best friend, because spring of junior year… you proved me wrong.

To the first boy who ever broke my heart and my spirit, I am so sorry and so disgusted with myself that I gave you that second, third, fourth and hell, tenth chance. I’m not sorry that I gave you the chance in the first place because you worked for it, you earned it. But every chance after that, when I knew better, when everyone told me better, I'm sorry for. I’m sorry that I wasted your time playing games as though you could ever make me happy.

There are a million other apologies that I could make, to hundreds of other people. People who broke my trust, my optimism, my hope. I have one apology that I need to make that’s much more important than any of those. I’m sorry to myself. I’m sorry for all of the heartache that I put myself through. Heartache that’s intensity could have been weakened had I walked away sooner. I’m sorry for not realizing sooner, that despite my childish beliefs, not all humans are pure and good. I’m sorry for letting my optimism get in the way of my judgment. I’m not going to stop loving, or trying, or hoping. I’m not going to regret the poor judgment calls or poor decisions that I’ve made. I’m going to be more careful. I’m going to carefully evaluate before giving someone another chance. I’m going to assess whether they even cared enough to ask for one, whether they cared enough to work for one. I’m going to stop at two because the further in you go the harder and harder it becomes to get out. I’m going to love myself and trust myself when I feel that the time to walk away has come, even if walking away means I never give it a shot at all. So I’m sorry to myself. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to come to this realization. I’m going to give myself a second chance despite my flaws and mistakes. Because I see that I want a change that I’m willing to work for a change. I believe myself, realistically, not optimistically, that I am going to make a change.