The Apology I’ll Never Receive

There was a time when I thought healing required an apology.

Not because I wanted revenge. Not because I wanted someone to beg for forgiveness. I just wanted acknowledgment. A simple admission that some of the things that happened hurt me. That some of the wounds I carried didn't appear on their own.

For a long time after my divorce, I convinced myself that one day it would come.

Maybe in a text message.

Maybe in an email.

Maybe during an unexpected conversation years later.

I imagined hearing the words: "I understand now. I'm sorry."

At the time, I thought those words would bring me peace. I was wrong.

One of the hardest things about divorce is accepting that not everyone sees the damage they caused. Some people move on without ever examining their role in the collapse. Others rewrite history in a way that protects them from guilt. And some simply don't care enough to revisit the past.

I struggled with that reality for years.

There were nights when I replayed arguments in my head, not because I wanted to win them, but because I wanted to understand them. I would think about things that were said in anger. Promises that were broken. Feelings that were dismissed. And I kept waiting for the day someone would recognize those moments the way I did. That day never came.

What made it harder was that I wasn't perfect either.

I made mistakes, I said things I shouldn't have said. I failed in ways I wish I hadn't.

I've spent years reflecting on my own shortcomings. There are things I would do differently if I could go back. There are apologies I owe. There are regrets I carry.

Maybe that's why I expected the same level of reflection from the other side, but life doesn't always work that way.

One lesson divorce taught me is that accountability isn't distributed equally. Sometimes one person spends years examining what happened while the other simply closes the chapter and walks away.

And that's painful.

I remember running into someone who knew both of us recently. During the conversation, they casually mentioned something my ex had said about the marriage. Listening to their version of events felt like hearing a story about two completely different people.

For a moment, I was angry. Not because they blamed me, but because I realized how differently we remembered the same life.

That was the day I stopped waiting for an apology. Because an apology requires awareness, and awareness cannot be forced.

The truth is, some apologies exist only in our imagination. We write them ourselves. We rehearse them in our heads. We hope they'll arrive one day wrapped in regret and understanding.

But many never do.

The strange thing is that healing eventually happens anyway.

Not all at once, not dramatically, just gradually.

You wake up one day and realize you've gone weeks without thinking about what they should have said.

Then months.

Then longer.

The need for an apology slowly loses its grip on you.

I used to believe forgiveness began when the other person admitted they were wrong.

Now I think forgiveness begins when you accept they may never do that. There is freedom in that acceptance. This is bacause as long as you're waiting for an apology, part of your healing remains in someone else's hands.

The apology I'll never receive used to feel like unfinished business. Now it feels like something else entirely.

Proof that closure doesn't always arrive from the people who hurt us. Sometimes we have to create it ourselves.

Joseph Abdalla