Do You Have Something You Want To Get Off Your Chest?

Hello. My name is Dave Bry. I wrote a book called Public Apology that will come out in March. The book started as a column on the website The Awl wherein I wrote personal essays in the form of letters to people I’ve wronged over the course of my life. There are more of these people than I wish there were.

It’s not that I think I’m a terrible person. Or that I was ever a terrible person. I’ve never been particularly violent or cruel or duplicitous or corrupt. But remembering back to certain episodes in my life—choices I made, what I must have looked like, how I must have affected people around me—I shudder. I see a person I probably wouldn’t like to spend much time with now. The video plays on the screen in my mind, and I think, Jesus, that was me doing those things? Not Puck from The Real World San Francisco? Why didn’t someone just punch me in the face? (A couple times, someone did.)

I don’t imagine I’m unique in this. We all make mistakes. But with the benefit of hindsight and honesty, we can try to set things right. And mea culpas can make for good stories—one’s that, like all good stories, can offer a sort of communion in the reading.

One of my favorite things about the column was that readers sometimes would write their own stories of contrition or regret in the site’s comments section. At one point, someone recommended that I start an open forum for apology that everyone could contribute to. More recently, someone suggested I use Medium as a platform to do so. So here we are. Do you have a story you would like to share? “Crowd sourcing” is the modern term. Maybe we can make another book out of this one day. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but if it does, and I use your apology, I will pay you money.