Food Poisoning or Karma? The Suckitude of Pseudo Apologies

English is not my mother's first language.  Although she has lived in the United States for over 40 years, she still retains a thick Chinese accent and her version of English is sometimes comical and sometimes tragic.  However when it comes to apologies, my beloved mother is a "no personal responsibility ninja."  Although around 5'2" and getting smaller each day, my mother has the aggressive nature of a bull in a china shop when it comes to feelings.  If she hurts you - whether intentional or unintentional - you need to just get over it.  If you ask for an apology, she will give a pseudo apology.  My favorite is "I am sorry you are feeling hurt."  Not "I am sorry I hurt you."  


Frankly, I do not know how the same woman who heard on the TV news that Ron Paul had a shot at winning a debate and then bemoaned how sad it was that someone shot Ron Paul; can be such a master wordsmith when it comes to avoiding responsibility for her actions.  It sounds like she's apologizing but she's not.  "I am sorry you can't seem to get over this" is also a top pseudo apology.


I think growing up with a Mother who was unable to apologize for her actions made me hyper-sensitive to bullish*t apologies.  Seriously, my Mother acts like giving a sincere apology where she admits fault is on the same level as divulging state secrets!  There is no way you're going to pry an apology from her lips.  I think you could water board my little Chinese mother and she'd still never say "I'm sorry for what I did to hurt you."  And if you keep pressing on her for an apology, she'll start spinning her bad behavior into how it's somehow your fault.  That you brought this upon yourself, so why should she apologize?  She diverts focus from her bad behavior to try to avoid any request for an apology.   


I've given up on trying to change my Mother a long time ago.  My step-grandfather gave her the nickname "The Chinese General" and it suits her well.  She is the strongest woman I have ever known,  And while I like to think I am pretty darn strong too, getting my mother to accept personal responsibility for any of her hurtful actions would be a quest made completely in vain.  Luckily, living on the other side of the country from my Mother; it is now rare for the Chinese General to lob emotional grenades at me.


Given the early origins of my hyper-sensitivity to BS, I was thinking about past relationships recently.  This issue of pseudo apologies has reared its ugly head a couple times in my life in the past few years.  I once was dating this guy that I was absolutely, positively, 100% head over heels for - I thought he was the nicest, kindest, sweetest, smartest man I had ever met.  Let's call him Supreme Colossal A--hole.  Or SCA for short.


I am usually very guarded and don't give away my heart freely, but for this guy I opened the rusty, spiked gates of my defenses and opened my heart to him.  For a long time, I was happy with my decision to take a risk, set aside my usual crusty armor of defense mechanisms and insecurities and be open to a relationship.  It seemed like my being open, honest and trusting had prompted an equal level of openness, honesty and trustworthiness in SCA.  I was very happy.


Unfortunately as all Disney movies will show you, there is always a traumatic twist.  After quite some time, SCA started to act differently.  The once sweet, kind and communicative man was now inconsiderate, rude and cold.  I wondered if pod people had replaced his brain.  Could I really have misjudged his character after all this time?  In the spirit of being honest, I talked with SCA to find out what was going on.  Was it just workplace stress making him act like a bastard or was there something more?  Instead of having a discussion, SCA freaked out.  Started jabbering about how I deserved much better than him and before I knew it, I had been dumped.  It was so out of the blue, I was gasping for air.  It was definitely the drive-by shooting of relationship enders.


I was absolutely in shock.  Things had been going so well for so long that I wondered if SCA had suffered some sort of emotional breakdown.  I wanted to believe there was an external cause for his callousness and insensitivity versus that he was really a complete a**hole.  Days passed and my immediate shock and sorrow turned to anger.  (I am the daughter of the Chinese General, after all!!)  I confronted SCA and he said "Sorry, but I'm acting irrational.  I didn't intend to hurt you.  I'm in survival mode (due to stress)."


If I hit someone with my car breaking their legs, whether I intended to hit him/her does not lessen the pain of the broken legs.  ("Oh, you didn't mean to run me down with your Hummer?  Well wow, look my legs have automatically healed and I am no longer sucking down Vicodin!")


As a human adult, you don't get to use a cop out like "I am acting irrational (due to stress)" to be your ticket out of personal responsibility for hurting another person.  If I stab you forty times and then say "Sorry!  Acting irrational!"  Is that a suitable apology as you lay bleeding to death?  I was half-expecting SCA to utter "I am sorry you are feeling hurt" - my Mother's old standard.


Being the calm, patient and serene adult woman that I am, I screamed like a banshee at SCA for hours.  But like the Chinese General, he was a tough nut to crack.  Perhaps I should have tried water boarding on him.  He kept making BS excuses about why his obvious disregard of my feelings was not his fault.  (Aliens take over your body?) He then tried to paint himself as the victim and that I had somehow brought this all upon myself.  When did SCA become my mother?  SCA was definitely dabbling in role reversal and projection!


SCA needs to take a Psych 101 class.


I am not sure what it is that keeps a certain segment of the population from being able to own up to their own bad actions and apologize sincerely.  No one is perfect.  We all make mistakes.  But to make a mistake that hurts someone deeply and then dodge all personal responsibility for that mistake is just a gigantic insult to an already devastating injury.


My theory is that we all want to see ourselves as good people who would never hurt anyone else, whether intentionally or unintentionally.  We don't want to consider that we could be capable of maliciousness and infliction of pain on others.  So when a spotlight is shown on our actions and we see that we did indeed do something horrific; we burrow ourselves deep in our perceived sense of self and DENY, DENY, DENY that we ever did anything wrong.  And if we happened to do something wrong, well it wasn't our intention and we're not responsible anyway.  Your fault, not ours!  So take your two broken legs and crawl away, troublemaker!  I'm not the one who hurt you.


I found out that several hours after dumping me, SCA contracted food poisoning and was sick as a dog for two days.  I will completely own up to having the biggest case of schadenfreude when I heard the news.  Could this be the universe's karmic retaliation?  SCA was vomiting and nauseated.  Which is funny because his ill treatment of me also left me completely nauseated.  My only regret is that his food poisoning was so short.  I think if this really were karmic retribution for the sh-tty way SCA treated me, that he would have suffered from explosive diarrhea for at least a month or two or three.  Oh, how a girl can dream!


Another case of pseudo apologies happened a few years ago.  I had a friend who I considered very close.  Let's call her MuuMuu. One day, MuuMuu had told a mutual friend some information about me that I considered to be highly private.  I was taken aback.  MuuMuu is normally a very considerate person.  


I rationalized to myself that I never told MuuMuu that what I told her was confidential, although the subject matter was of a topic that would normally invite discretion.  As we had been close for several years, I thought instead of stewing that I should just be honest.  I told MuuMuu that I was at fault because I didn't tell her that certain information was confidential, but I was mortified that she had shared it.  Since I would be seeing the mutual friend at a social gathering that weekend, could MuuMuu please tell me exactly what she had said to the mutual friend so I could know if I was walking into an uncomfortable situation?


I didn't necessarily expect an apology because I didn't specifically tell MuuMuu the information was confidential.  However what I received in return was an email from her blasting me - basically listing out all these BS statements on how I was at fault, not she.  (Umm, am I a ventriloquist?  Did I somehow make your mouth move and throw my own voice while you were gossiping about me?)  But after MuuMuu's email list of BS, she wrote "I've been a good friend to you - so you need to get over this or else."  I'm not really sure what part of that is a sincere apology.  


I chose "or else" and didn't return the email.  I was never great with ultimatums.  My theory is that MuuMuu was not good at handling any sort of criticism and the personal responsibility of her actions.  I came to her in honesty and not aggression and she took both barrels and shot me between the eyes.  I was somehow at fault, not she.  And now I just needed to get over it.  Or else.


I think MuuMuu is the poster child of someone who desperately needs to cling to an idealized image of themselves.  In MuuMuu's world, she does not want to think of herself as someone who is not the ideal friend.  So my questioning her on her gossiping was in direct opposition to her starry-eyed view of being the ultimate good person.  Instead of apologizing, MuuMuu lashed out, tried to make an argument that I somehow was guilty for her gossiping about me.  After several years, the friendship was dead because of this hair-trigger hostility, denial of personal responsibility and overall rudeness.  A truly sad way to end a multi-year friendship.


From the peanut gallery, I have heard that MuuMuu had suffered several setbacks in her life after I ignored her ultimatum email.  I will not be as smug to say that this is karmic retribution.  However I do truly believe in the old adage "what goes around, comes around."  And if you take someone who cares about you, is kind and honest and you basically sh*t all over them ... well let's just say that is not spreading positivity through the universe.


However if there is karma, I have to think that behaving as an adult and accepting personal responsibility for both our good actions and our not so good actions is one way of shoring up one's karmic reserves.


Earlier this week, an insensitive JERK made me feel bad.  I was consumed with both anger and shame.  I could easily have packaged up these intense negative emotions and dropped it on someone else's head making them feel equally as bad as JERK made me feel.  Instead, it seemed that everyone at my work was having some sort of personal crisis or anxiety.  Throughout the course of the day, I counseled 15 different people who were going through such real life fears from not having the right skill sets for an assignment through losing their jobs.  I am a great problem solver and mentor.  I talked each person individually through their crisis, gave helpful tips and checked how they were doing emotionally.  So many people told me that I had helped them shed their despair and get back on the right track.  I was happy to have helped.


Instead of hurting people the way JERK had hurt me, I chose to help others.  To make them feel good instead of making them feel bad.  I wish JERK had had the same spirit.  I'm not perfect and I have definitely done my own share of inadvertent or intentional hurting of people over the years.  But I hope that as new people enter my life that they are adults who own up to their own personal actions.


And I will try my best to do the same, as well.


I think if we all try a little more each day to be considerate, compassionate and treat others the way we wish to be treated, that the world would be indeed be a better place.  Or at the very least, a less hurtful one.  And for SCA and MuuMuu, I hope they one day learn the lesson that hurting people and then ducking from their own personality responsibility is not going to win or keep friends.  In denying that their actions hurt someone, they are only hurting themselves in the long term.


Oh and beware of explosive diarrhea!