Chapter Eight: Happily Ever After
If I was only allowed to talk about one thing from my experience within the hell rodeo that was coming forward, my thesis to complete this PhD from hell would be: that no one actually knows how to apologize.
In this final chapter of the first season of peaches, I’m going to throw myself under the bus.
I will be the example as to why apologizing is much more beneficial for the wrong-doer than it is for the victim.
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This is peaches; a series of essays dedicated to the things I learned while dedicating my life to never being raped again. My name is Maarika Freund, and this is:
Chapter Eight: Happily Ever After
Trigger warning: rape, sexual abuse
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While Canadians are outrageously famous for saying “sorry”, I think that we’re really awful at it. Although, it’s not only Canadians who don’t know how to apologize. It’s my opinion that we’re living in an era where nobody knows how to do it at all.
It’s been rare for me to receive a genuine, unprompted apology, and when those are given, they’re really gorgeous moments. But most commonly, I’m used to receiving apologies in one of two situations:
1. When you already know or anticipate you’re going to be forgiven, or
2. When saying sorry isn’t even warranted and the appropriate response is: “oh honey, you have nothing to apologize for!”
I think it’s scary to apologize. And not so much because of the action itself, but, I think it’s largely because nobody understands why they should apologize. I think a lot of times people see it as a way of giving up their power, instead of a way of being able to access peace. And peacefulness, in my opinion, has become way too underrated. So, I think because of this lack of understanding, as a global society, have developed an aversion to taking responsibility for our actions or our inactions. It takes a lot of strength to own your own shit. It takes a very brave person to be able to say: “I messed up”. It really stinks to feel badly, and it’s not fun to be punished if you don’t feel badly about what happened.
Now, if you’re reading this, I’m assuming that you have a conscience, and if you have a conscience (because not everyone does…), feeling badly about something is really awful. Especially if you have a lot of reasons to feel badly.
We have entered this fascinating phase of the human evolution when it comes to how we punish people. Instead of gathering together in a physical courtyard to tar and feather the wrong-doer, we have instead gathered on the World Wide Web and begun cancelling each other. If we consult Wikipedia, cancel culture is:
“a phrase contemporary to the late 2010s and early 2020s used to refer to a culture in which those who are deemed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner are ostracized, boycotted or shunned. … Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled".”[1]
Getting cancelled was around long before social media. The original cancel culture was public hangings or when you put people in those wooden things to throw tomatoes at them. Now we don’t kill people or throw tomatoes at them. We just make it impossible for them to show their faces in public, which, sometimes, is a fate worse than death.
Anyway, in my opinion cancel culture has always been rampant throughout our collective society, social media just raised the stakes. The reason I don’t feel that whistleblowing is in the same vein is because it’s about the truth, and it’s about stopping destructive behaviour. Whistleblowing can, however, and often does, slide into the territory of cancel culture. This happens when the desire to honour the truth shapeshifts into the ugly desire for power. And, none of this can be about power if we actually want to experience the dismantling of rape culture. So we can’t force people into apologies because it’s a misuse of power, and we also can’t force anyone into forgiveness because that’s an equal misuse of power.
I’d like to clarify, that in no way am I condoning hate speech, or racism, or acts of brutal violence. I think that those fall into their own category, and when you condone behaviour like that, saying “sorry” or apologizing isn’t enough. There is another level of having to take responsibility for your actions that is very, very important. If something that has happened or something that you’ve done has ruined someone’s life, or turned it down a path that you’re unwilling to go yourself, you have a responsibility to help bring that person back and to help make sure that they’re okay. I do really believe this.
This being said, cancel culture has made apologizing incredibly scary. And this is why I feel like apologizing can feel like the worst thing ever. In this day and age, you do run the risk of getting cancelled after you apologize. If that happens after an honest mistake, or unplanned ignorance (because let’s face it, we’re still unlearning a lot right now due to negative and oppressive behaviour that has been socially acceptable for quite some time now), well, you’re fucked. But it’s my opinion that wanting to be a better person is a very honourable act. And I think we need to start honouring this desire a bit more strongly and deeply.
After everything that I’ve observed and witnessed, it’s my opinion, after coming out of a hell rodeo that lasted nearly eight years, that the real issue is that we all desperately need to regroup and look at what it actually means to apologize, what it actually means to forgive, and why we should be doing both. But I honestly don’t think we can look at either of these two things until we’ve reintroduced a term that, as a society, we disposed of a long time ago.
If you’ve listened to Chapter Three: Lion’s Heart, you’ll remember that I pooh-poohed The Bible. That I didn’t think it was a good handbook for this century. I still, whole-heartedly, stand by this statement. For example, drag queens and the LGBTQ+ community I believe are divine humans sent from the heavens to make this world more bright and sparkly. I also believe that these beautiful humans deserve equal rights. I also believe that abortions are also a divine gift sent down from the heavens, and that it’s a right every person with a uterus deserves to have access to. So I really don’t believe that The Bible is a handbook that we should be leaning on for all of our guidance moving forward.
That being said, I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, because if you’ve listened to Chapter Five: Wisdom from a Baby Elder, pt. 1, you’ll know that while I have my own complicated relationship with spirituality, I think it’s a really important part of our human existence. I do believe that we have a Soul and, as Caroline Myss teaches, that our Soul has its own language. It’s just that this spiritual and holy language got wrapped up in religion. And, when it comes to the word I want to reintegrate back into our vocabulary, just like how Canadians have said “sorry” so many times that the word has lost all of its meaning, so too has this word become abused and misused thanks to Catholicism.
The word I think we need to desperately reintegrate back into our vocabulary is sin. We need to bring the concept of sinning back into our everyday vocabulary in order to finally learn how to apologize and how to forgive again.
Now, understandably, when things like abortion, being a part of the LGBTQ+ community, or participating in drag are described as sins by Bible thumpers and religious fanatics, I understand needing to put the word sin into a rocket and blast it into the sun, much like how the planet Melmac exploded in the 1990’s sitcom A.L.F. But if we divorce the word sin from the Catholic church, we might have something that an inclusive, global society will be able to work with.
Caroline Myss, in her work around holy language, really describes the concept of sin beautifully, so I’m going to lean on her here in order to explain why I think we can’t have an apology or forgiveness without it.
First and foremost, what Caroline teaches, is that the concept of sin and sinning isn’t actually a Catholic. They, just like Canadians and the word “sorry”, made it famous. What we generally know sinning to be, or as it’s defined in The Cambridge Dictionary, is:
“The offence of breaking, or the breaking of, a religious or moral law”[2].
Now, as soon as we put the word religious into a definition, the word gets, understandably so, blasted into the sun. Blown up like the planet Melmac. This definition, too, I think really misses the point. Caroline Myss, in her 2019 workshop on Holy Language, is able to define sin without using the word religion, or bringing the now abstract concept of “moral law” into its meaning. She defines sin as:
“A conscious act. [That] by choice, [you are] consciously doing something to harm another person, or, [you] know fully, that [your] action is something that will change another person’s life for the worse. [You] know it, and it doesn’t stop [you].”[3]
How many times have you received a half-assed apology from someone that included a phrase along the lines of: “I never meant to hurt you”? Even though, you and the other person both know, full well, that that isn’t the case at all? It’s excruciating to hear this because when a phrase like that is thrown into an apology, it’s not an apology anymore. It’s an aversion of the truth. It’s just another way of saying: “If you don’t forgive me, I’m going to make you the bad guy in this situation.”
Now, one of my big goals in this podcast is to make broaching uncomfortable subject matter more accessible. So I decided to do a very Gen Z thing, something I’m sure Caroline Myss would probably roll her eyes at and really detest. But I just want people to stop acting like ding-dongs and I want people to want to heal. So! I created – nay – found – a whole new word to use when talking about the concept of sinning.
I do think that the Catholic church has abused their power to the point in which we need to readdress and redress certain concepts, especially the ones associated with healing in order for them to be reintegrated back into our everyday practices. So, I’m putting the word sin in drag. I took Caroline Myss’s definition and put a rhinestone blazer on it. I Mrs. Doubtfire’d the shit out of sin so it can do what it is supposed to do without generating an understandable amount of trauma.
What I did was open my Notes App, close my eyes, and with my right index finger, pressed a few buttons on my iPhone keyboard. When enough vowels and consonants came together in a way that didn’t sound garbled, I was gifted the glittery new outfit for the new star of the forgiveness trio.
Now, I really did this. And I have to say, I felt like a giant turd while it was happening. I felt like such a turd that when my husband innocently came over to see what I was up to, I reacted like an embarrassed weenie and told him to go away because I couldn’t bring myself to say, without context: “I’m trying to find a new outfit for the word sin”. Like I mention in Chapter Six: Survivor, healing is messy. What I don’t think I homed in on is that, sometimes, the road to healing is also totally embarrassing.
In order to play it safe, because high tech companies are coming up with new words all the time, I promptly Googled the letter formation U-V-E-I-T-I-S to make sure it wasn’t a word that already existed. Turns out, it is a word that already exists.
Uveitis is actually a form of eye inflammation that happens when your body is fighting an infection, and if left untreated it can lead to loss of vision. How poetically accurate, eh?
But, like any good costume designer, I took the word uveitis to the tailer and had it modified to fit the definition that Caroline Myss provided. So, I’m fully proposing this new-ish word for sin’s drag performance:
Uveite (verb): to knowingly harm another person. Whether by active choice, or through active in-action, it is the ability to see that what is or is not going to happen will, in fact, change that person’s life for the worse, and knowingly allow said thing to occur.
And, for clarity within the rest of this chapter, I would say:
past tense: uveited
future tense: to uveite
gerund form: uveiting
And, lastly, for trending purposes and, with my fingers crossed that someone will add this to UrbanDictionary.com, someone who uveites a lot would have a mad case of uveitis.
So, now that we have dressed the word sin up in drag (as a fun digression, I so feel like uveite’s performance song would be lip synching to Meredith Brooks’s Bitch), we potentially have a less threatening and less traumatising “holy trinity”, if you will, when it comes to reconciliation. Because without admitting having uvited it’s not a real apology, and forgiveness isn’t possible without the admission of uveite.
Now, I’ve spoken about how the admission of having uveited is important when it comes to reconciliation, but I haven’t actually spoken about how the admission of uveite is an important act of release for the person who has uveited. I haven’t talked about why we need to apologize. So, I’m going to throw myself under the bus by telling you a fairy tale about how I uveited in the past, how not apologizing for uveiting ate away at my Soul, and what magical thing happened for me after I finally did apologize properly.
So, grab some more popcorn and/or cocoa and get cozy. And, once again, apologies in advance for talking about myself in the third person.
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Once upon a time, in a suburban city in Southern Ontario, there lived a Princess named Maarika.
Princess Maarika didn’t grow up in a safe and loving home. Because of this, she lived every day with a lingering sense of worthlessness, and a deep longing for someone to save her. While she was being held prisoner in a scenario that no true princess deserves, her lingering sense of worthlessness meant that when she had a “thing” that was “hers”, she was quite possessive of it. She didn’t have many “things”, per-say, but one of the few things she felt made her unique was that she always had fun, loud sunglasses.
Sunglasses were one of Princess Maarika’s things because, in all honesty, she really just hated her face and wanted to cover it up. She grew up being told she was ugly, and sunglasses helped hide what she had been taught to be ashamed of.
When Princess Maarika was in the eleventh grade, the new cohort of freshmen the arts high school she attended brought in a really lovely, charming, wonderful young woman who just so happened to also have an affinity for fabulous sunglasses. Let’s call her Barbie. Barbie’s signature pair of sunglasses were bright red with deliciously solid, thick, plastic frames. They were brilliant, and everyone complimented Barbie on them. Barbie, very innocently, became a threat to Princess Maarika and “her thing”.
That same year, a new teacher arrived to be the head of the drama department. This program head decided to purge the school of all the old props, costumes – everything. In this grand purge of whatever didn’t spark joy, Princess Maarika and her classmates were given free range to take whatever they wanted. So that year, Princess Maarika and her fellow classmates got into the intoxicating habit of taking whatever they wanted from the drama room. Their daily outfits became delightfully extreme, and they were, more or less, living the wet dream of every teenage thespian.
One day, Princess Maarika found herself alone in the drama room. And, to her surprise, Barbie’s fantastic, bright red sunglasses were sitting on the countertop, not too far from a pile of things that were now up for grabs. Barbie never went anywhere without those sunglasses, so it was a strange and rare occurrence that they were sitting where they were. Everyone in the school knew Barbie’s sunglasses, and everyone knew, including Princess Maarika, that Barbie was not looking to part with them.
But they were fabulous, and they were a few feet away from another pile of costumes that were up for grabs.
Princess Maarika, knowing that Barbie would be devastated if her sunglasses disappeared, took them anyway. Not because Princess Maarika wanted to hurt Barbie, but because Princess Maarika wanted to have those sunglasses and the compliments that always came with them. They were close enough to that pile of free things for Princess Maarika to justify taking them. In that moment, she decided that she deserved to be the rightful owner, and that they were fair game because of where they were left behind.
Not too long after taking the sunglasses, Princess Maarika’s moral compass switched on, and she felt like an ogre both inside and out. The problem was that her moral compass redirected her the exact moment it was too late to return them covertly. She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t steal them in a moment of weakness. She also didn’t find herself alone in that classroom again, so if she put them back where she found them, Princess Maarika would have had to admit that she had stolen these sunglasses. To make matters more complicated, Princess Maarika was on the Student Council. She couldn’t risk her position or scholarships. She couldn’t risk being disrespected by her peers. She had already tried talking about the deep traumas she was experiencing at home and wasn’t taken seriously. Instead, the mental health of her family, and the abuse she had to endure, became what everyone made fun of at parties. Princess Maarika was a joke because of what she was dealing with at home, and her friendships felt highly conditional because of it. She was in a real pickle. She finally had the sunglasses she wanted, but couldn’t wear them because she would be exposing how she had uveited against Barbie.
But one day, a few months later, when Princess Maarika was feeling especially confident, she decided to wear Barbie’s sunglasses. She didn’t think that she would run into Barbie, but Murphy’s Law is a strong one, and Princess Maarika ran right into Barbie with those fabulous, red sunglasses on. Rightfully so, Barbie confronted Princess Maarika, and asked Princess Maarika if they were her sunglasses that went missing from the drama classroom a little while ago.
In a bold-face lie, Princess Maarika said: “No, these aren’t your sunglasses. I got them in Kensington Market.”
Barbie knew that Princess Maarika was lying. Princess Maarika knew that Princess Maarika was lying. But Princess Maarika said no, and that was that.
As Princess Maarika got older, and as more time passed from the moment her sixteen-year-old-self stole Barbie’s sunglasses from the drama classroom, the worse she felt about it. And Princess Maarika thought about it a lot. About how stupid she felt about taking something that wasn’t hers. About how badly she felt for how she had behaved in such an entitled way. About how she hurt another woman for her own gain, and it wasn’t even a big gain. About how badly she felt about not being confident enough to just say “yeah, I was an asshole, here are your sunglasses back”.
The more time that passed, the worse her crime seemed to get. It just kept growing in her head. In fact, her behaviour haunted her more than ever. She felt so badly about this one moment in her history, that even in moments when she was accused of stealing when she hadn’t, she didn’t fight back. For example, when she was written up at the vegan restaurant she was working at. Princess Maarika’s first boyfriend came in with his brother one day while she was working, and decided to talk some big talk about how he “got food there for free”. Unfortunately, the woman working the juice bar that day, who just didn’t like Princess Maarika very much, overheard him, and she reported Princess Maarika to their manager for stealing. The saddest part is that Princess Maarika’s boyfriend only thought he was getting food for free. Princess Maarika always paid for their food at the end of her shift. But she signed the piece of paper that labelled her a thief, let her manager yell at her, and then kept her head down at work.
More years went by and Princess Maarika had to think about what she did that day in eleventh grade. And then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly eighteen years, Princess Maarika found out that she now lived in the same neighbourhood as Barbie, and that they both shopped at the same grocery store. It was so lovely for Princess Maarika to see her, and Barbie greeted Princess Maarika with such warmth and kindness. Barbie had this beautiful lightness about her – it was possible – she became even cooler and more beautiful after high school, which made Princess Maarika feel one thousand times worse.
But Princes Maarika didn’t feel one thousand times worse because Barbie was doing so well. On the contrary, her gorgeous light just made Princess Maarika feel like an ogre more than ever. By this point in Princess Maarika’s life, she had done the whole “hot goo thing” she talked about in Chapter Six: Survivor so many times already that she was no longer a jealous person. Princess Maarika was just upset and disappointed in herself because she had knowingly done something that hurt this incredible person. She knew when she was sixteen-years-old that taking those sunglasses would hurt Barbie, but she did it anyway. Her action in the past wasn’t a boo-boo or an accident. It was uveite.
Princess Maarika sat and thought about the person she wanted to be. About everything that she had learned throughout the hell rodeo. About the kind of person she wanted to be once the publication ban was finally lifted on her name. She thought about how she would want the people who let her down to behave, and about what she would want from the people who knowingly uveited against her, because, well, there were a lot of moments of uveite against Princess Maarika.
A couple of hours after her delightful encounter with Barbie, Princess Maarika decided to come clean and apologize for what she had done. She knew it was the right thing to do, and if she had to eat crow, well, it was about time that she did.
Terrified of what kind of punishment might come from admitting her uveite as a hormonal teenager, Princess Maarika wrote to Barbie and apologized to her in an Instagram direct message. She apologized for taking the sunglasses, and explained that she wasn’t in a good place at that point in her life when she took them. And then, she waited. “Whatever happens next”, Princess Maarika thought, “at least I like my face, now.”
Barbie promptly responded. Princess Maarika didn’t have to sit and wait in a panic for too long, but she could feel her heart beating in her ears, and the cold sweat developing under her arms. She opened the response from Barbie. And when she opened the message, it was as if the glow from the screen of her iPhone was emanating a magnificent healing light, because Barbie told her that she forgave her. Not only did Barbie forgive Princess Maarika, but she didn’t remember anything about the sunglasses. To Barbie, the action that had driven Princess Maarika, sometimes into deep depressions, had been completely insignificant.
The next day, Princess Maarika had a session with her therapist, and she recalled the panic she had felt when she was sending Barbie that long over-due apology, and how Barbie didn’t even remember the occurrence. Her therapist laughed and said:
“See what happens when we build things up in our heads?!”
While logically, Princess Maarika knew that her therapist was accurate. Quite often she would build things up in her head. But, when it came to Princess Maarika’s Soul, she knew that her apology wasn’t nothing. Princess Maarika had uveited against Barbie, and Princess Maarika knew she was better than that action she made in the past. The apology was incredibly important for her own release from the prison of her own mind. The apology was necessary for her own freedom, and no prince would ever be able to come in on a white steed and rescue her from the shackles of her past actions. This was something she had to save herself from.
Since that moment, there wasn’t a day that went by where Princess Maarika didn’t think about what a beautiful Soul Barbie was. There hasn’t been a day that goes by where Princess Maarika doesn’t feel oodles of gratitude for her. Gratitude for releasing her from a really stupid, cruel action she took when she was a kid. Gratitude for the grace she exuded through her graceful, and effortless forgiveness of Princess Maarika.
After a year passed from Princess Maarika’s apology to Barbie, the publication ban was finally lifted on Princess Maarika’s name. And, a few weeks after the ban was lifted, she was heading off to Israel with her Prince, who, she had just freshly wed. But before her Prince carried her away on a 727 to a land far, far away from everything she had been praying to be rescued from, Princess Maarika found herself at an old friend’s house for one last get-together before she moved across the Ocean.
To Princess Maarika’s surprise, and for the first time since the hell rodeo began, she received the kind of apology she so desperately wanted. It was the kind of apology she never imagined she was going to receive.
Her friend said: “I’m sorry I never came to the trial to support you. I should have been there for you. I knew I should have showed up and been a better friend, but I didn’t, and I am so sorry I let you be alone through all of it.”
This moment, being shared over takeaway dosas in the midst of a global pandemic, was an incredible gift. And Princess Maarika could see the pain in this friend’s eyes as she was making this unprompted apology, admitting having uveited. This moment was a big deal for both of them. Princess Maarika remembered how scary it was to talk to Barbie about something she so deeply regretted. She remembered how much grace Barbie showed her in that moment, and she thought about what kind of person she wanted to show up as now that the publication ban was finally lifted.
Princess Maarika replied: “Thank you for saying that. And it’s okay. I know that at this point in history, we were all still figuring out how to be in those moments.”
Maybe, just maybe, there was good karma from her apologizing and admitting uveite with Barbie. Or maybe Princess Maarika’s therapist was right, and this moment wasn’t anything more than a silly coincidence. Logic and reason aside, the instant feeling of relief and healing that comes from admitting uveite is something that years of therapy can never fully grant a person. Princess Maarika knew that both her Soul, and the Soul of her friend, felt a huge, beautiful release in that moment, and Princess Maarika began to trust, once again, that the Universe works its magic and rights things in its own time.
Although having trust in the Universe didn’t necessarily make the pain of waiting, or letting go, any easier, it did give Princess Maarika faith that things would work themselves out in the end. Always.
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Before I close this chapter, I want to talk about something I’m really disappointed about, which is how I’ve witnessed and experienced the abuse of power when it comes to apologizing, or actively choosing not to from our mentors and elders.
I believe that apologizing has become an experience that doesn’t feel good, largely due to how the elders in our communities have shaped the experience around it, whether it be from favouritism, biases, or simply an abuse of power. So, because there are so many instances of leaders in within our communities who force people into apologies and forgiveness as an act of submission, which I actually believe is a psychological rape, a lot of times we don’t get to learn what the positive release of a sincere apology actually feels like.
It’s my opinion, that just like we have been working to become a consent-driven society when it comes to sex and dismantling rape culture, I think a huge missing piece of this puzzle is our desire to become a society that also takes responsibility for its actions.
So much like sex, when we’re forced into apologizing, it feels absolutely horrid. However, when we want to apologize, it’s a beautiful release that has positivity attached to it, even if the recognition of behaviour is a painful thing to look at.
Recognizing what we’ve allowed to happen for so long isn’t supposed to feel good. But I do have faith that it can feel safe, and I do have faith that there is a way to find joy in this. Because genuine apologies don’t solely benefit the victim. They benefit all of us.
And you know, I bet that if we started treating apologizing like cumming, well, then, I bet we’d be apologizing all the time.
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