Acknowledge, Apologize, Accept

The title is what I call the triple A’s of life. I wanted to touch on this subject for about a year now. I had written and erased the things that dealt with this topic. It wasn’t until this morning when I got on Instagram, and the first thing that popped up on my feed was the post of a young brother. I sat up in my bed to read the post over and over. This post was the first time I have ever seen someone put it out to the world the struggle that many men are dealing with. For many years I put sex before my peace and anything else in my life. The elephant has always been in the room, but I never addressed the issue head-on. In the African American male culture, men aren’t groomed to talk about some of the issues that they have. It goes back generations that men are to have high self-esteem, not to cry and get as many women as you can. As I’ve aged, I see how much African American male culture is hurting. We have self-esteem issues, anger, mistrust, and a lot more issues that we never show. The young man’s post hit home for me to start the three-step process of Acknowledgment, Apology, and Acceptance.

Acknowledgment
I acknowledge that I have slept and entertained women to distracted myself from the issues that I had in my life. At points in my life, I have been numb to the problems I had going on personally. I substituted women to only get one thing from them. I have always fled after the conversation of “what we are doing.” I  pushed away potential relationships which could have lead to marriage. Sex is one of the most potent drugs out there, and once you are hooked, you are hooked. I let my insecurities get the best of me, and I never dealt with the root of the problem. One quote that has replayed over the years says, ” A man must first find himself before he finds his woman, or he’ll damage whatever woman he comes in contact with along the way. I know for a fact that I have hurt a lot of women that I may have crossed paths with over the years. I acknowledge that I put band aids many of my open wounds. It is now time to remove those bandaids and let the healing begin.

Apologize
To all the women that I have hurt, I want to apologize for the hurt, harm, and damage I have caused you. I apologize for acting selflessly and only thinking about myself. I also want to apologize to a particular woman. This woman was there for me from the jump and showed me that it was ok to be myself. I am genuinely sorry that we lost a friendship due to my actions and lack of actions. I apologize for lying, cheating, mistreating, and, most of all, not being 100%. I let my issues bleed into your life, and I left without cleaning it up the mess I caused.

Acceptance.
I acknowledge that my past has troubled the relationships that I have had. I accept the fact that I caused more harm than good over the years. I know that if we may never cross paths again, I learned something, whether good or bad. I also want to forgive those women who caused deep issues that can only be healed by God. Whatever past issues that I have from this day forth, I will face them head-on and deal with them.