Dear Friend, Child, Family Member,
I want to tell you I’m sorry for what I said: all of it, all of the times. I don’t say the right things. I blurt things out before I think about it. Mostly, I tend to hurt people’s feelings. I tend to get my feelings hurt easily, so you would think that I would have a pretty good idea of what might hurt.

You would think that, wouldn’t you?

I think that part of a person that knows what to say and when to say it is broken in me. I can think of times I have said the wrong things, years ago, and I still have this sinking feeling in my stomach. There are people who are gone from my life and people gone from this earth and I can never make it right with them.

How can I make it right with you? The only thing I know to do is apologize.

he only problem is that I know I will end up doing it again. I will say the wrong things or fail to say something I should. Then I will end up making a fool of myself- AGAIN. I don’t mind being fool, but if I hurt someone by my foolishness- I mind.
This endless cycle of foolishness is why, many times, I stay away from people. It is also why I have an abundance of former friends. I don’t know how to make things right when they go wrong.

And things go wrong, don’t they?

It’s also why I refuse to make new friends. I feel bad rejecting people I have just met but I am trying to protect them from me. I’m doing it for their own good.

So I am left with those friends and family who I most deeply want to keep. I try to engage… re-engage. I try not to avoid you. It is my goal to be a good friend, despite my flaws. I want to crawl in a hole and yet I want to be in the light.
When I shut the door and don’t answer the phone, don’t take it personally. I WANT to talk to you. I want to love you. I’m just not very good at it. It takes a lot of nerve. It takes a good bit of bravery, for me to be your friend. What with my awkwardness and all.

Sometimes people say things that hurt me and I don’t know how to tell them. I don’t know IF I should tell them. So I understand if you don’t want to discuss it. I’m trying to take this chance to be open with you.
You don’t have to respond to this. You don’t have to continue to be my friend. All I hope for is amiable cordiality among the people I see. I don’t presume this is as big a deal to you as it is to me.

Just understand that when you see me engaged in life, with people, that it takes a good deal of courage for me to be there. I’m not asking you to pity me. I’m just asking you to realize that it goes against all inside me that screams for me to withdraw from society at large.

Above all else, please forgive my fumbling ways. Forgive the things that I say.