Dear Society.

I’ve made mistakes. Millions of them. I keep making mistakes. Often, I make the same mistakes over and over. And no matter how much I try not to, I’m going to keep making mistakes. Not because I want to, but because I can’t not make mistakes. I’m only human. Mistakes are the only constant in my life.

Everyone makes mistakes. I did. You did. She did. He did. You can hold it against me. You can criticize me. You can ridicule me. But you can’t judge me on the basis of something that I didn’t even mean to do. That’s exactly what a mistake. Something that you didn’t mean to happen, but it did anyway.

So no. You don’t get to judge me.

No matter how much I regret having done something I shouldn’t have, I can’t take it back. And I can’t change it. No matter how much I want to.

So why don’t you accept that I made a terrible mistake. One like that terrible mistake you made probably just once in life, but bad enough to never be able to forgive yourself anyway and let me off the hook?

Just because I don’t keep apologizing for a mistake doesn’t mean I’m glad I made it. So why don’t you cut me some slack and not make me curse myself every time?

You can pinch your nose, look at me accusingly, give me such a disgusted look that I want to bury myself a hundred times, but guess what, I forgave myself. And since you’re such a hold-it-against-you-forever person, I don’t care about you forgiving me anymore.

I’m a better person and I’d never make the terrible mistakes again. But I won’t waste my time trying to feed you that. You won’t buy it anyway. So why bother. So why don’t I save my time and yours, my breath and yours and not waste an effort.

Very sincerely,

The girl who stopped caring.