Something i should have never written (sorry!)

At a bar tonight talking to the local Alexandria regulars, I was confronted with my past. A girl that I would have laid down in front of traffic for, a woman I would have given up anything for to make her life right, smiled and waved me over. I went knowing that there was no good to be gained from this exchange, and hoped that our conversation would stay in the past, no matter how much I wanted to hear her lash out for the singular event that destroyed my only true friends love for me. Though I broke down and gave in some, I at least never apologized. It was her birthday and her ex continued to buy us drinks even as he realized that he had long out lived his usefulness in the conversation. His final departure marked the beginning of her drunken tirade against my person. Though I too feel that I have plenty to be mad about with her, I feel nothing. No serious emotional response at all was really available, if I had been able to respond I think if it was four years ago I would have felt something like this….

I could never tell you that I was furious with you. That you abandoned me when I needed you most. That I was at the point in my life for the second time where I would either be alone and start all over, or that the friends that I had would come and take me away. Yes, it sounds fairytale and ideological but damn it I had sacrificed so much for those friends. I had given up so much for their benefit and I was in need. Not only was I in need then but within a year I would be deployed and the first time in my life I would need my friends, and I had none except those I took with me. I was alone as I thought I had always been. That I had put so much into relationships that in the end proved to be fruitless, a reinforcement of my own self doubts, brought to life by the actions of the very people that said they loved me. Fuck them, fuck them then and fuck them all the way to now. Somewhere between there and here, the mask that I wore became real and they no longer mattered to me. How dare they presume that they know what was in my mind, how dare they presume with out asking how I felt. Well at the time fuck them, they say they feel sorry for me; I don’t want their pity. They hope that I have changed, well knowing the choice I made at the time; I know that I haven’t and am proud of it. As I sat down to write how I felt, thinking that I had so much emotion pent up and could write for hours on the exchange, it turns out that as I have trained myself to be, it meant nothing. I have felt almost nothing in the process of the night. I don’t even hope or wish for her. Then with a smile I think maybe I have become what she must have thought I was then.

It is funny, I have never apologized for that week of my life that caused my two best friends to stop talking to me. One for somewhat justifiable reasons, the other for no reason at all. It is a shame that I group them together, but they are not. They are completely different. One, was incredibly angry at my misinterpretation of the situation and my unwillingness to sacrifice for her on some small scale. It is funny that the small stuff will kill you. I would have given up my life for her, yet the three hours it would have taken to get her where she wanted to go and back, I couldn’t do. Obligations are funny that way, that when the small stuff cant out weigh the other stuff you will sacrifice. Yet had it not been that small, had it been a crunch or something more significant, I would have done anything. The other being so much more complicated but I will say that I have never been disloyal. I have never betrayed. And if she did not do that, then well I am completely wrong but that is how it felt. A girl that I loved and loved and loved hit just the right button. Its funny as well that most buttons can be ignored or argued about, but he combination of buttons that she choose, knocked me out. And that was it, I had been left alone again surrounded by what should have been my best friends. So, tonight I had the opportunity to say how furious I was with one of them and I couldn’t. She had been drinking and was again telling me how I should live and be so that I could grow and all of the abstract things that would make me a better person, when she looked at me and said, you know you have never apologized. My response was calm and soft, no, I have never apologized. Her response was what are you looking for from me, and in the same voice I responded, nothing, nothing at all. With a smile I tried to tell her happy birthday but it was lost as she came to grips with what she must have seen in my eyes.