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The following is not subject to comment for several reasons. This post is made for my own benefit. I'm not one to sit with things on my heart and I've let this one fester for months now. I doubt whether several of the parties involved even bother with my journal at all anymore. I don't expect it to open any sort of dialogue with anyone, so there's really no need for comment. Everyone who has the right to say anything in this particular situation already has, in one way or another. Approval, disapproval, ambivalence...they're all pretty much moot points now, as they are points that have already been made. Keeping it all between the lines, though, has rubbed me like a pebble in my shoe. I just figured it was time to take the pebble out and leave it here as a marker, before I continue on my journey.
I have been here for almost three years now, had a multitude of so-called and real friends at any given time. I have cut and added to my own list more times than I can even remember. I have only truly felt the loss of three friends here. All this year: one early on, one a bit later, and the last most recently. One for each year of my stay it seems, a toll for my grand stupidities. They weren’t people that I knew well—which probably explains why so little patience with me when it came down to it. I often wonder if it seemed like I didn’t care about what they thought because I never made an effort to explain myself. I wonder if anything I could have said would have made any difference. I simply assumed that it would not. I was hurt by what I perceived as the harshness of their judgment. At the same time, I was tongue-tied by my own understanding of how they all must have felt. So I never reached out. I never made an effort to say anything at all. I was awkward and silent, because I felt like they didn't really know me and I was ashamed of how I must have looked to them. Oddly enough, the fourth person who had reason to think me the most cruel and foolish of all is the one who is still my friend. I like to think that is because he is the one who did know me best, and gave me the benefit of forgiveness and understanding that comes with our friendship. For after everything we are, in our own particular and peculiar way, always and ever friends. The others chose differently. I can’t change that. They have a right to guide their own hearts as they see fit, and I’m old enough to know that fences like this don’t really ever get mended. So I will let it all go, as one finally has to do. And that’s a shame, really; because I think there was probably a lot left for us to learn from one another. We now pass each other in these virtual rooms as if we’d never even met. Nevertheless, they are people I knew once. They are people whose company and words I enjoyed and looked forward to almost everyday. They are people that I miss.
I have been here for almost three years now, had a multitude of so-called and real friends at any given time. I have cut and added to my own list more times than I can even remember. I have only truly felt the loss of three friends here. All this year: one early on, one a bit later, and the last most recently. One for each year of my stay it seems, a toll for my grand stupidities. They weren’t people that I knew well—which probably explains why so little patience with me when it came down to it. I often wonder if it seemed like I didn’t care about what they thought because I never made an effort to explain myself. I wonder if anything I could have said would have made any difference. I simply assumed that it would not. I was hurt by what I perceived as the harshness of their judgment. At the same time, I was tongue-tied by my own understanding of how they all must have felt. So I never reached out. I never made an effort to say anything at all. I was awkward and silent, because I felt like they didn't really know me and I was ashamed of how I must have looked to them. Oddly enough, the fourth person who had reason to think me the most cruel and foolish of all is the one who is still my friend. I like to think that is because he is the one who did know me best, and gave me the benefit of forgiveness and understanding that comes with our friendship. For after everything we are, in our own particular and peculiar way, always and ever friends. The others chose differently. I can’t change that. They have a right to guide their own hearts as they see fit, and I’m old enough to know that fences like this don’t really ever get mended. So I will let it all go, as one finally has to do. And that’s a shame, really; because I think there was probably a lot left for us to learn from one another. We now pass each other in these virtual rooms as if we’d never even met. Nevertheless, they are people I knew once. They are people whose company and words I enjoyed and looked forward to almost everyday. They are people that I miss.
