Apologies

 I am so very sorry. Moment by moment, minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day I say it a thousand times in my head and out loud. I say it on my walks, and while I work, and when I sit by myself. I know it doesn't change anything, but I have to say it. When I stop it begins to fill me up like a cup in a waterfall. I do not think the apologies will ever end, because I do not know how I could ever be sorry enough for all that I put you through. Every time we talk I find more bad I've done, more pain I've caused, and more reasons to apologize. 

At first I thought there might be a day when I could show you I have changed enough that you might begin to forgive me, to heal the wounds I've opened, and maybe one day I might even be able to forgive myself for my actions and inactions and blindness to it all. But now I cannot see that day. It feels like lifetimes will have to pass before those wounds might start to heal. 

If that is so, then I hope that I will find you in the next life and the next, and show my better self every time, and give my apologies in every life, until a day comes when we meet and all your wounds have turned to scars, and all the scars have faded away, and the me you meet is a person you can forgive, even if by then the why is long forgotten. I hope somewhere deep in my soul, when that forgiveness comes I will be able to receive it, and slowly stitch up the wounds I've created in myself.