The apology you're still waiting to hear

You replay the conversation in your head. The one where they finally understand what they did. Where they see the damage. Where they say the words you've needed to hear for years.

I'm sorry. I was wrong. I hurt you, and I see that now.

But that conversation never comes. And you're still here, holding space for an apology that will probably never arrive.

You thought if you could just explain it better, make them understand, show them the proof of your pain, they'd finally get it. They'd acknowledge what happened. They'd take responsibility.

So you tried. You wrote the letter you never sent. Practiced the speech in your car. Imagined confronting them and finally being heard.

But every time you got close, something stopped you. Their defensiveness. Their rewriting of history. Their ability to make you question whether it even happened the way you remember.

Or maybe you did confront them. And they denied everything. Minimized your experience. Made you feel small for even bringing it up.

Either way, you're left in the same place. Without the closure you need. Without the validation that what you went through actually mattered.

Here's what happens while you're waiting for that apology. Your life stays on hold. You can't fully move forward because part of you is still back there, waiting for them to finally see you.

You give them power they don't deserve. Power over your peace. Over your ability to heal. Over whether you're allowed to feel okay about what happened.

You measure your healing by whether they've changed. Whether they've admitted fault. Whether they've proven your pain was real by acknowledging it out loud.

But they don't have to change for you to heal. They don't have to admit anything for you to know your truth. They don't have to apologize for you to close this chapter and finally walk away.

The apology you're waiting for? You already know what you need to hear.

You need someone to say your pain was real. Your experience mattered. What happened to you was wrong, and you didn't deserve it.

You've been waiting for those words to come from the person who hurt you. But they can come from you instead.

You can validate your own experience. You can acknowledge your own pain. You can give yourself permission to grieve what happened without needing their approval to do so.

This doesn't mean pretending it didn't hurt. Or absolving them of responsibility. Or deciding what they did was okay after all.

You're just choosing to stop letting their refusal to see you keep you stuck. To stop giving them the power to decide whether your healing is allowed to begin.

Closure doesn't require their participation. You can close this chapter yourself.

You can decide that waiting for them to understand is costing you more than walking away ever will. You can choose to believe your own memory over their denial. You can honor your experience without needing them to co-sign your truth.

The apology might never come. And you can heal anyway.

Not because you're letting them off the hook. Not because what they did was fine. But because your peace matters more than their acknowledgment. Your future matters more than their past. Your healing matters more than their refusal to see what they've done.

You don't need their apology to move on. You just need to stop waiting for it before you let yourself live.