The Art of Saying "I'm Not Sorry"

The Art of Saying “I’m Not Sorry”

By Megan Matthews

Illustration by Anna Morrissey

Elton John might sing that ‘sorry seems to be the hardest word’, but for me, saying ‘sorry’ is an indulgence that rolls freely off the tongue. It’s ultimately self-deprecating, but ‘sorry’ is a mode of gratification where I can, for a moment, absolve myself of any potential, impending or forecast feelings of guilt. Saying ‘sorry’ acts as an amour to protect my ego, a salve to soothe my existential feelings of guilt and a way to contain, and make excuses for, any professional and personal failures I have thus forth experienced. This 5-letter word has become a universal qualifier for everything I do. The truth is, I like saying ‘sorry’. I know that ‘sorry’ will consume any space I don’t want to inhabit. When I say ‘sorry’ the attention will fall on that word and its sentiment, and not on me. ‘Sorry’ has become an indulgent way for me to escape responsibility.

 

There is also a passive aggressiveness to my ‘sorry’. I can say ‘sorry’ with deadbeat eyes and a furrowed brow and absolve feelings of guilt, but also feelings of anger, frustration and annoyance. You wanna bump into me on the train platform? I’ll bump your ego with a sarky ‘sorry’ and a glaring gaze. As Sloane Crosley says, ‘sorry’ is ‘a Trojan horse for genuine annoyance’. But like the Trojan horse, this ‘sorry’ is a ruse, and a lie. It’s combative, it’s aggressive, and whilst this angry ‘sorry’ feels more empowered than the typically apologetic one, it is still an excuse to not articulate your feelings. Viv Groskop breaks it down to simple terms— ‘sorry’ is ‘a non-assertive complaint. Why not just complain?’ To stand up for yourself is to take up space, be tall and strong and dominating. ‘Sorry’ minimises all of that, masks it, knocks it down a peg, makes it ultimately redundant. The soothing salve of ‘sorry' only settles for a moment. The short-lived relief from guilt, or the quick vent of anger, leaves you pondering why it is you use apology to express yourself in the first place. Sure, it leaves me absolved of social responsibility, but what about the responsibility I have for myself?

 

Not only does ‘sorry’ refuse me an opportunity to stand up for myself, but it also ruins how I look in front of my peers. A confronting CNBC article puts it blatantly— over-apologising ‘can lower your self-esteem’ whilst also making ‘people lose respect for you’. Where I thought ‘sorry’ was a protective armour, it was actually a dismissive act of self-sabotage. Saying ‘sorry’ has become a reflex— an automatic reaction to any and all scenarios. We say sorry in place of polite sentimentalities like ‘excuse me’ and ‘thank you’. We say sorry when we send food back or when someone holds a door for us. Apparently the ‘average British person says ‘sorry’ eight times a day’— but why?

 

The belief that saying ‘sorry' is an expression of politeness is a socially engineered construct. Amy Schumer’s skit that shows a panel of powerful, smart and successful women who undermine their own achievements by constantly saying ‘sorry’, is a frustrating display of society’s pressure on people, especially women, to diminish their achievements and sense of selves. Each woman in the skit is introduced by her impressive accolades; a Nobel prize winner in Chemistry, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an active charity worker. Yet, each woman diminishes these achievements by unnecessarily apologising for things like, being allergic to coffee, saying thank you at the wrong time, and correcting a mispronunciation of their name. Pantene’s ‘Sorry, Not Sorry’ advertisement shows the same thing. So engrained in our psyche is this need to maintain, blend and diminish our selves, that we are happy to do so at the sake of the accomplishments that we have worked hard for. By saying ‘sorry' in place of vocalising your feelings, as Viv Groskop explains, it ‘allows the other person to take a higher status and establish that you’re not a challenge to them’. But we should all strive to be a challenge to everything and everyone around us. That is how betterment works. We should be challenging everything that is going on in our weird-ass, problematic world at the moment. But, if you are constantly apologising, how do you have the time, agency or gravitas to do that? Sloane Crosley places the questionable relationship between ‘sorry’ and self further into a gendered context, saying that, 'being perceived as rude is so abhorrent to women that we need to make ourselves less obtrusive before we speak up.' A history of enforced female silence has created a warped understanding of the power of expression in our modern day society. The ‘sorry’ qualifier that follows every powerful statement, or conflicting opinion, is just a perpetuation of our history’s ‘seen but not heard’ confinement of womanhood. To say ‘sorry’ is to negate the space that women have fought for so long to inhabit. It diminishes feelings of agency, confidence and power. It undermines not only the words and expressions you say, but also your own physical sense of existence. 

 

What’s worse is that most of the times I say ‘sorry’ I don’t mean it. I’m not ‘sorry’ when I say no. I’m not ‘sorry’ when I do well. I’m not ‘sorry’ when I eat a whole bar of chocolate *cough or two cough cough* in bed. I’m not ‘sorry’ when I bail on plans I really don’t want to go to, and I’m not ‘sorry’ for having an opinion. I am not ‘sorry’— at all. I can blame this lie on instincts. I can say it’s not a real lie, it’s a reflex. But it is a lie, and lying, like saying ‘sorry’, takes a little bit of my soul away each time I do it.

 

Much to the chagrin of my friends who have been telling me for years to stfu about ‘sorry’, all of the above realisations were sparked by an unfortunate run-in with my shadow. Consumed in the universal haze that was 2020, mixed with my natural lack of spatial awareness, last year I walked into a wall where I promptly scowled at, then profusely apologised to, my own shadow. As absurd as I know this image is, it was a physical and ultimately grounding manifestation of my relationship with ‘sorry’— in that moment I attempted to take up less space than my own shadow. This inanimate interaction shook some sense into my ‘sorry' soul and I made a conscious decision to stop. 

 

Since then, ‘sorry’ and I have broken up. After an initially flippant termination of the relationship where I will admit, I did slip back somewhat into its cold, but familiar arms, I am working on being ‘sorry’ free. Following advice from regular Insta inspiration @justgirlproject I replaced ‘sorry’ with ‘thank you’, and my email starters changed from ‘sorry to bother you’, to ‘I have a question I need to ask’. My conversations are now more direct, there is better clarity in my work, and I project a confidence 16-year-old me would not have believed. Granted, I have yet to be bumped into on the street because you know, Covid, but I have an action plan for when that inevitable does take place— and it includes no apologies. Every time I go to say ‘sorry’, I pause, take a breath, and ask myself if I truly am ‘sorry’ for what I’m about to excuse myself for. 90% of the time I really am not, so I just don’t say it. What happens next, in that withholding of ‘sorry’, is an incomparable release of self-satisfaction and pride. The exhale of the taken breath feels like an expulsion of the apologetic menace inside of me— and it feels good. 

 

Whilst in lockdown, my anti-‘sorry’ training has continued. The ‘I’m Not Sorry Saga’ has become a nighttime ritual where I write down a list of the things I have done in that day that I am truly not ‘sorry’ for. I’m not ‘sorry’ I spent an hour dancing to Miley Cyrus’s ‘Plastic Hearts’ instead of practicing my shorthand. I’m not ‘sorry’ I didn’t reply to my Instagram messages because the internet was scary today. And I’m not ‘sorry’ that I bought another strange cottage-core dress off of eBay. I’m just so not ‘sorry’. I find writing down the things I am not ‘sorry’ for allows me to see and understand how ridiculous it would be to apologise for those things in the first place. I don’t need to say ‘sorry' for any of the above and I’m not going to anymore.

 

To counter Elton John’s ‘sorry’ sentiment, Demi Lovato’s unapologetic, ‘Sorry not Sorry’ is a much more apt mood for 2021. In a world which is on the precipice of damnation, cut yourself some slack and stop apologising for existing. It feels pretty damn good to dominate, and not apologise for, taking up space.