Chrissy Teigen said not a single moment has passed where she hasn’t felt the crushing weight of regret for the things she has said in the past.
In a lengthy post published on Medium, the model, businesswoman and wife of crooner John Legend, broke her weeks of silence to once again apologise for bullying people on social media.
Teigen has been accused of cyberbullying former reality star Courtney Stodden, and on Monday, designer and former Project Runway star Michael Costello accused her of embarking on a campaign to ruin his career.
Since Stodden, who at 16 wed Doug Hutchison, a then 51-year-old acting coach, came forward showing old tweets from Tiegen in which she told them to "take a dirt nap", stores such as Macy's and Target have pulled her cookware from their websites.
Teigen said in her post that she is truly ashamed of her tweets.
"As you know, a bunch of my old awful (awful, awful) tweets resurfaced. I’m truly ashamed of them. As I look at them and understand the hurt they caused, I have to stop and wonder: How could I have done that?"
Stating that she is in the process of privately reaching out to those she hurt, Teigen said: "There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets. My targets didn’t deserve them. No one does. Many of them needed empathy, kindness, understanding and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor."
"In reality, I was insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted. If there was a pop culture pile-on, I took to Twitter to try to gain attention and show off what I at the time believed was a crude, clever, harmless quip. I thought it made me cool and relatable if I poked fun at celebrities," she said.
Teigen assured that she is a much better person now.
"The truth is, I’m no longer the person who wrote those horrible things. I grew up, got therapy, got married, had kids, got more therapy, experienced loss and pain, got more therapy and experienced more life. AND GOT MORE THERAPY.
"Life has made me more empathetic. I’m more understanding of what motivates trolling — the instant gratification that you get from lashing out and clapping back, throwing rocks at someone you think is invincible because they’re famous. Also, I know now how it feels to be on the receiving end of incredible vitriol. Believe me, the irony of this is not lost on me."
Teigen ended her note by saying she won't ask for forgiveness but for her fans to allow her to own past mistakes and be given the opportunity to seek self-improvement and change.