John Agliata – Johnny Boy Marketing

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Making Things Right — February 3, 2025

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Apologies🙇
Remember🎶
Eternal Sunshine☀️

THE DAILY UPDATE

Most of us are taught from an early age that you need to apologize if you hurt someone’s feelings. My amazing kindergarten teacher, Mrs. O’Loughlin, was the first non-parent to drill that lesson into my brain, and it stuck.

The thing about recovering from decades of brain illness is that the line of people who deserve apologies for your behavior isn’t short. Depression, anxiety, unresolved childhood trauma, and destructive thought patterns … they aren’t exactly the ingredients for a recipe of happy relationships.

I have known people who have gone through the hell of brain illnesses and then tried to absolve themselves of their responsibilities to attempt to set things right because “That wasn’t me. That was my depression.” I understand the desire to distance yourself from your behavior while you were going through the brain illness stuff. Trust me. But true recovery can only be completed when you own that shit too. It was you who said and did those things. It might not be the you who you are today. It was the you that you fought so hard to defeat. But it was still you.

And so I’ve gone about the business of saying “I’m sorry” systematically and intentionally. Some of those I have hurt have been gracious and welcoming. They have listened intently to my explanations and apologies, and they have forgiven me. This makes me happy, though no less regretful for my actions.

There was a part of me that thought that everyone would be like that. Again, I guess this goes back to early childhood. If someone wronged you and came to you to apologize, you were expected to forgive them. Thank Muricah’s good old-fashioned Christian ethos or the truth that kindergarten teachers dig forgiveness because it means greater classroom peace. Whatever it is, it can make it extremely jarring when someone says, “Uhhh, no thanks.”

I have reached this point in my Apology Tour, which, for the sake of being all young and hip, I’ll dub my Apology Eras Tour. A few people remain in my past whom I have hurt, whom I have wronged, and who have refused a meeting so I can talk with them and offer an apology and an explanation and a sincere hope to chart a different future. At the very least, what I would love from these situation is something I’ve called a Better Goodbye. A few of the most important people in my past left because I shoved them away during a horrible time, and in the process, I said and did things I regret. I’m talking majorly regret. So, so much has happened in the intervening years, and all I want is a chance to say I’m sorry, to look them in the eyes and for them to see the depths of the changes, and for me to thank them, yes, thank them for their role in getting the changes started.

But when you’re met with “I wish no further contact,” what can you do?

The result is a million words bottled up in a container that holds about a thousand, and the pressure that yields is immense. This isn’t a hunt for sympathy. I don’t need it nor deserve it. Any suffering that has come because of my actions, whatever the cause, is suffering I earned and I will carry, regardless of the future. But that doesn’t satiate the desire to set things right, to have that Better Goodbye, because goddamn it, these relationships were that good that I feel like a Better Goodbye is the only way to write the final chapter of what was an amazing, amazing book. Without that Better Goodbye, we get to the last page of the novel and say, “Well … shit. That was great, right up until the author fucked up the ending.”

And yet, I get it. I get why some might not want to have that conversation with me. I hate it, but I get it. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about making me feel better. And for some, the best way to move on with their lives after my influence in it is to not have my influence in it ever again. That might be right, that might be safe, that might be appropriate, but it still sucks and it still feels like an incomplete book.

So my approach has been to be patient, to give things time, to offer up the truth that I’m always going to be here, always ready for that conversation, always wanting that conversation and that Better Goodbye. I’m going to always be available for these folks should they ever need me … for anything. I owe that to them, and a whole helluva lot more.

But I fear as I get older that time is running out. I make no secret about the fact that my affinity for Here is small to begin with and is slowly wanning further. I’m well aware of my own mortality and, perhaps sadly, embrace it. With all the things I’ve gone through in my 50 years here, an increasingly and already large part of me is waiting for There and longing for what I’ve experienced of it so far. Peace. Contentment. Completion.

Yet I feel like if I get There without having made these things right, there never will be true peace, true contentment, true completion.

And so yes, I wait and I will be patient. But I’ll always be ready to have those conversations, to try to explain, to make things as right as I possibly can … to have that Better Goodbye.

Something I’m grateful for today: The unseasonably warm weather. Suck it, rodent.

Song of the Day: Please Remember Me, by Tim McGraw

Meaningful lyric from the S.O.T.D.:

Remember me when you’re out walkin’
When snow falls high outside your door
Late at night when you’re not sleepin’
And moonlight falls across your floor
When I can’t hurt you anymore

Something good from today/yesterday: Being in a good enough position less than three months after neck fusion surgery to completely clean out and organize the garage.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: Hosting a murder mystery night with some couple friends.

Something I’ve written: Eternal Sunshine, 20 years Later

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