I'm Sorry.

Has there ever been a phrase so potentially unmeaning and cruel? I can't think of anything next to "I love you," can you?

I think that "I'm sorry" is one of the most thrown around phrases in the human language. People say it in response to something negative. In response, unthinkingly. Not necessarily after musing it over for a lengthy period of time. They say it just to make the other person calm down, essentially hoisting the white flag of surrender.

Where did all this animosity against the phrase come from? From an "argument" with my best friend Josh, if you can call it that, hence the quotation marks. Of course there is a lot of history going into this entry about why Josh reacted in such a way, but explaining it is beyond my capacity at the moment.

Simply, I was supposed to go camping this weekend and now I am not. In fact, I'm as far away from camping as I can be, typing away on a laptop computer plugged into an electrical outlet, sitting Indian-style on my queen-sized bed underneath a roof.

Josh and I were supposed to go camping with our old swim team, the Barracudas, but after he got mad at me for supposedly "forgetting" about how we were supposed to hang out Thursday, I cancelled my plans to go with him and the team. One, we had hung out the day before. And two, I never said we weren't going to hang out, only that I could for a few hours to which he replied that he had planned on us going to the beach. Take note that I wouldn't have gotten out of work until 5pm and also that he never told me his beachy plans. He was acting like a jealous boyfriend, again, and I wasn't going to have it. It made me so, so close to just walking away from the death trap that is our friendship, but after talking with my mom I realized, again, that it's hard for someone with feelings to drop them at the door every time they hang out. I understand. I've been there. But it still doesn't make up for the fact that he is annoyingly possessive of my time and outright unreasonable when it comes to me trying to reason with him. He chose this.

I know I sound like a tool. But it's annoying when he blows his top the day before something that's supposed to be really fun and enjoyable. I've been looking forward to this camping trip for a month, and sure, I could have gone, but that meant spending the weekend with a horrible grouch. I opted out.

Of course, he always comes around. He apologized this morning and invited me on a beach trip for today (Saturday). I was almost going to take him up on it since I have absolutely nothing at all planned for today now, but I refused. Call me stubborn, or call me a trying friend. Maybe that camping trip just wasn't meant to happen, or maybe I'm still mad about it and won't accept his apology. Or maybe it's both. I think it's wrong he's shrugging it off and replacing it with an invitation; I didn't want to go to the beach, I wanted to go to the mountains. Now I sound like a five-year-old.

I overreacted at first, but now I'm cooling off.

Is it the phrase "I'm sorry" that's misused most or "I'm fine?"