I am sorry. I read something last night posted by a “FB friend.” It was about something that had happened twenty years ago. The fact that it took him twenty years to write about it suggests a degree of significance in the story of his life.

Good parts of my story, the memorable moments, are my history. The others are the past; the parts that were so bad, they should be left alone; in the past. I have a past.

I hold on to certain things for decades too. My living room looks like a shrine to people and places I have loved, little alters of prized scraps everywhere. My mind is like that; cluttered with my remixed memories. I verge on the brink of being a memory hoarder.

There was something about reading this post that twisted my dreams into a nightmare. I was sitting on the beach on a island in the middle of the ocean. Suddenly, there is a volcanic eruption. Instead of ash, mutilated corpses are falling from the sky. Wake up!

I want to offer an apology to this friend. He would never have had the experience he wrote about, if not for me. Other exceptionally good things came out of us knowing one another. For those things, I am eternally grateful. For the pain I caused, I am sorry.

To kick-off my New Year, I’m trying to declutter my past. I’ll kick-off with apologies. For any and all grief I have ever caused, I would like to officially ask for forgiveness. May this New Year gently bring us all more peace and less pain. It’s kick-off time.