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These words are my diary screaming out loud

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Thirty Days of Truth, Day 3

Day 3: Something you have to forgive yourself for
This one took a bit of thinking about. I try not to have too many regrets in my life, but there is one that I just can't shake, and it's totally my fault. My best friend in high school came out to me about halfway through our senior year. It changed absolutely nothing as far as I was concerned - we went to prom together, and sometime during my first year and a half at the Naval Academy, even though he had begun seriously dating someone, he agreed that if I was single when it came time for my Ring Dance at the end of junior year, he would come up to Annapolis and be my date to that as well. But I screwed it up. I started dating a guy during my sophomore year that was a bit of a homophobe. We got more serious, and started talking about marriage, and he said that he would not be comfortable with a gay couple at the wedding. Of course I thought it was silly, but I made the mistake of telling my best friend. I thought nothing of it at the time. But soon, I noticed that he was not returning my calls. And when the boyfriend and I broke up a few months before the Ring Dance, and I left my friend multiple messages, I never heard back. Sometime during that summer, I finally got ahold of him - I don't remember if it was phone or email now, but he basically told me that he didn't want to be my friend anymore because he felt that it was just too one sided. I was mortified - I had never been called a bad friend before, and always been the one putting the effort into friendships that wasn't reciprocated. Even with this one!! It wasn't until several years later, I think when we became friends on Facebook, that I finally found out the real reason for our falling out. To this day, our friendship has never recovered. We're on good terms now, but we don't talk outside of the occasional Facebook comment. I get my updates on him from Facebook and our mutual friends. I'm thrilled that he is happily married (to that same man), and looking into adoption. He's going to be an amazing father. And someday, I hope, I will be able to forgive myself for hurting him so badly that it ruined our friendship.

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