Today, I screwed up.

I woke up this morning to a phone call that set my mood for the day. It doesn’t much matter what it was about, it was a phone call, nothing more. But from that moment on, as the day progressed, I only thought about all the things that were wrong with this day, and paid no attention to the things that were right.

In retrospect, I have done more things wrong today than possibly any other day on record, or at least any other day that I can recall. The mistakes were many and they were vast. They were not intentional, but they were done, by me, nevertheless.

They happened.

I let my emotions control my actions. I let things pile up and grow bigger than they really were. I let the sum be bigger than the parts. I let the whole become so much larger than the pieces that added up to it, that the small things that were really the issues were indistinguishable by the end. They were warped bloated versions of themselves.

I did today wrong.

And no matter how many times I close my eyes and wish I could start over, could do something different, could change even one small part of it, the reality is that I can’t. I want to pick up the pieces and put them back together. I want to fill in the cracks with glue so that you’ll never be able to see what I’ve shattered, what I’ve broken, but I can’t.

I can’t fix it. And that might be what hurts the most.

I have to live with what I did today. I have to realize that what happened, happened. That what was said, was said. That there’s no re-do, that there’s no way to start over or to go back in time. I have to realize that my words, my thoughts, my actions have ramifications and that it’s my turn to face them. And they are considerable.

My New Year’s Resolution was to stop regretting, but as I type this, I know I’ll regret this day forever. I know that this day will always stand out as a day that I did wrong, that I destroyed. That today is a day that I ruined with my words, my actions, my inability to see what I was doing. A day where I lost track of reality and poured my misconstrued version of it onto those who didn’t deserve it.

If there was a gift that I could buy that showed how sorry I am that I ruined things, I would have bought the entire lot. Or if there was a card that said, I wish today had never happened, I’d clear out every store and mail a new one every day, just as a reminder. If there was a way to fix this, it would be already fixed.

But there is no gift, no card. There is no solution tonight. There is no do-over.

There are no excuses.

There are regrets. There are tears. There are profound heartfelt apologies, ones whose words hardly even can contain the truth that they bear.

There is pain, both inside my heart and in the heart of those I’ve hurt.

There is no going back.

All that’s left is tomorrow.

And hopefully, at some point, forgiveness.

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