What I Thought Making Amends Would Fix

When I first came to Step Nine, I thought I understood what an amends was.

I had hurt people. I had made mistakes. There were things I regretted. So I figured I was supposed to find the people involved, apologize, clean up the mess, and hopefully feel better afterward.

Simple enough.

Except relationships have never been simple for me.

Before ACA, I spent a lot of my life trying to manage how other people saw me. If someone was upset with me, I wanted to fix it. If a relationship was damaged, I wanted to repair it. Sometimes I apologized because I was genuinely sorry. Other times, if I’m being truthful, I apologized because I couldn’t tolerate knowing someone was angry with me.

That made Step Nine more complicated than I expected.

“Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

That last part mattered.

There were people I wanted to contact because I wanted relief. I wanted to explain myself. I wanted them to understand why I had behaved the way I did. Maybe I even wanted them to tell me that everything was okay.

But an amends wasn’t supposed to be another way of controlling the outcome.

Sometimes I had something I could actually repair. I could acknowledge what I had done without defending it. I could repay something. I could change the way I behaved toward someone.

Other situations weren’t so neat.

Some relationships were over. Some people were no longer safe for me to contact. And with some people, reopening the past might have caused more harm than healing.

I had to sit with that.

Maybe the biggest lesson of Step Nine for me has been that making amends and being forgiven are not the same thing.

I can take responsibility for my side of the street. I cannot make another person understand me, trust me, forgive me, or want a relationship with me.

That realization still isn’t particularly comfortable.

But it is freeing.

Today, I think less about making the past come out differently and more about what my life looks like now. Am I becoming more honest? Am I taking responsibility sooner? Am I noticing when fear, people-pleasing, or the need to control is driving my behavior?

Some of my amends have involved words.

Some have involved actions.

And some, I suspect, are being made quietly in the way I choose to live today.