Redemption is a phone call away with the apology hot line, a college student's effort to offer solace to troubled souls unable or unwilling to unburden their conscience in person.
The apologies come in mostly late at night, when people are alone with their thoughts.
"I'm sorry that I turned my back on true love," says one man. "I'm sorry for having an affair with a married man," a woman says.
Others apologize for embezzlement or for lying.
One sad voice says "I'm sorry I was ever born."
Calls to the number are transferred to an answering machine that urges callers to "apologize for anything. Say you're sorry. The idea is to make yourself feel better."
The hot line offers participants a chance to alleviate their guilt and, to some degree, to own up to their misdeeds. Several art and Internet projects provide similar forums, offering comfort without the risk of confrontation.
Project creators say they are offering a public service. But critics worry such apologies might be helping people avoid the face-to-face closure they say is required for true healing.
"You might get something off your chest, but how really honest is that to the person you're trying to apologize to?" asked Monsignor Kevin Irwin, a Catholic University of America theology professor.
The hot line's creator, 20-year-old sophomore Jesse Jacobs, believes the line can offer redemption to the 30 to 50 people who call each week.
"I'm just hoping that these people will feel better themselves, just by getting whatever's been bothering them off their chest," said Jacobs, an art history major at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Callers, who remain anonymous, learn about the line from postcards that Jacobs leaves around the New York City area or through small ads placed in the back of local publications. Many callers, he said, are in earnest search of absolution.
"I hope this apology will cleanse me and basically purify my soul, my conscience," says one caller. "God knows, I need it."
Such apologies, even to an answering machine, can provide valuable relief to those riddled by feelings of guilt or depression, said psychologist Jay Nagdimon, director of the Suicide Prevention Center at Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center in Los Angeles.
"Psychologically, apologizing helps people to accept themselves better," he said.
Jacobs said he understands the healing power of saying you're sorry. Caught stealing beef jerky from a store as a child, it wasn't until he returned to apologize to the manager that he felt some relief.
"I actually felt a lot better afterward," he said. "It was like a stone on my conscience for so long."
Irwin agreed apologies are valuable — when he hears confessions at Washington's National Shrine, he often suggests apologizing as part of a penance. Still, he likened the relief hot line callers might experience to "feeling good on the cheap."
But for many hot line callers, directly confronting the person they have wronged is not possible, Jacobs said. Often, the ones they have wronged won't speak to them or are dead.
One woman called to apologize for using her dying mother's medication money to finance a shoe addiction. Another apologized for hurting her husband just days before his death.
Similar endeavors have framed apologies as art. An installation that ran in New York from 1980 to 1995 allowed callers to listen to others' apologies as well as make their own. The line's curator, Allan Bridge, became known as Mr. Apology.
Some callers to the apology hot line are seeking more than an anonymous forum. One desperate-sounding man who apologized "for existing, pretty much," and said he had "always been a failure," left his phone number. But Jacobs — uncomfortable with playing what he calls "the God role" — said he didn't plan to return the call.
The service could be harmful for such anguished callers, said ethics professor Margaret Urban Walker, who is finishing a book on wrongdoing and repairing relationships at the Princeton University Center for Human Values.
"This might be causing people ... to be trying a bit of self help when they really need serious help from someone else," she said.
Nagdimon, a suicide hot line veteran, disagreed, saying the hot line could be a first step for those who might otherwise not seek help.
"Confidential hot lines help people save face. ... This takes that concept one step further," he said. "They may go on to call a hot line after this, because now they're used to picking up the phone, dialing someplace and experiencing some relief."