I did things that were just…
Ridiculous.
I’m all about owning my behaviors, past and present.
When I was like 23-24 years old, I wrote a series of stories about my family. It was basically a way of coping with my dysfunctional upbringing by using humor.
The title contained a fragment of a word that was commonly used at the time to describe stupidity, someone acting ridiculous, or someone acting like a moron.
We really should have never used that word at all, becuase it is a word that at one time was used to describe persons who live with Special Needs. The way I used it was in no way making fun of or making light of those who live with Special Needs; I used it to describe the stupid sht my fking mom and dad would do and say because their marriage was toxic and at times, borderline violent.
A colleague of mine was like “just leave it be and don’t say anything about it. That was a different time, and we used that word.”
But see, I can’t do that. I’m honest to a fault.
I was an asshole for using that word, and I can apologize for it all the live long day, but apologies are bullsht in so many ways. It never got published, but it happened.
I can’t go backwards and change that, but I can go forwards and make sure to educate my son about being mindful of our words and actions.
That’s all I can do.