Chapter Three: Sorry Was a Foreign Language
Some words never lived in our house.
"I’m sorry."
I never heard it. Not once.
Not from the man who made the wounds nor the system that looked away.
In my house, wrongness had no consequence—only volume.
My father didn’t say sorry.
He said, “You provoked me.”
He said, “A woman must submit.”
He said, “Don’t make me angry.”
He said a hundred things that meant “I’m above correction.”
And that was gospel.
And we believed it—because fear is persuasive when it wears a clerical collar.
Power, to him, wasn’t protection.
It was permission.
To strike. To shame. To silence.
To make my mother small in front of the children she carried with sacred exhaustion.
After his storms, I’d wait.
In the quiet. In the ruin.
Just once, I wanted him to walk into the wreckage and say:
“I was wrong.”
“You didn’t deserve that.”
“I need help.”
But kings don’t confess.
And he fancied himself royalty.
He wiped his hands.
Drank his tea.
Read his Bible.
As if blood didn't stain the scripture.
The silence between us was not peace—it was paralysis.
A hush too thick to breathe through.
Unspoken rules held it up like scaffolding:
Don’t ask. Don’t mention. Don’t provoke.
And my mother?
She swallowed every unsaid apology like they were communion.
Tried to pray the violence away.
Tried to forgive what never asked for forgiveness.
Sometimes I wonder what one honest “sorry” could’ve done.
Not for his salvation.
But for her soul.
Just once.
“You are worthy of respect.”
“I hurt you.”
“And I am sorry.”
But that was not a line in his liturgy.
In his gospel, accountability was weakness.
And women?
Built to endure.
So I learned the same.
I learned that love doesn’t come with repentance—just routine.
That pain gets swept under the rug of tradition.
That abuse is followed by breakfast.
No reckoning.
No rebuilding.
Just eggs, toast, and don’t bring it up.
Now, I don’t listen when men say they love me.
I watch.
How do they apologize?
Do they deflect?
Do they shrink from discomfort?
Do they ghost when they fail me?
Because I know what cowardice wrapped in masculinity looks like.
I grew up with it.
Called it Dad.
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