Sad and Sorry

After about fifteen years of silence, I googled an old friend, found her, and we arranged to have dinner together. My memories of her span many years. We worked together in the late 70s. After that job, she became an HR director for a small company, and found a job for me there. We played together, talked for hours, and were just great friends. My memory is... that our lives changed and we drifted apart. She had a couple of kids, I moved in with a woman, we both had different jobs, and we just lost contact with one another. I've thought of her frequently over the years.... about eight years ago, almost reached out to her when the news was filled with the downfall of a former colleague of ours (someone we had known to be less than truthful, and who was finally caught outright in a lie).... but it seemed like it had just been too long, and I resisted the impulse to try to find her.

We had dinner together last night, mostly, as expected, catching up on the events of the past fifteen years. I was especially struck by the clarity of her memories... she asked after a number of my friends. One of those couples had been especially dear to me - their family had become my family, I knew their parents, I was close to their kids, they were deeply woven through my life. That friend broke my heart many years ago by telling me that they really could not invest any time in the relationship which I held so dear - they needed to spend their precious free time with other couples with kids. She did reach out to me a few times after that, but I was so wounded that I could not see my way through continuing the severely altered (and to my mind, diminished), friendship. So last night when my friend asked after them, I told that story.

And this friend told me that fifteen years ago we had in fact *not* drifted apart, as I remembered. She said that I was with a woman at that time, and I told her very clearly that my new lover was not comfortable with straight folks with kids. She told me that I made it very clear that my life was taking a new direction that did not include her... and even remembered saying to me "But I'm harmless! I won't even bring my kids!"

We finished our dinner and our reminiscing, and as we hugged goodbye in the parking lot I told her that I was SO sorry that I had been such an incredible jerk. And she said simply "But I've forgiven you."

I wish that I could forgive myself. I'm finding that too many lines in my address book are crossed out because folks who were dear to me have gone back to God, and I am very aware of my own mortality. I find myself reliving so many things that I wish I had done differently. This one is particularly galling because I did not even *know* that I had made such a miserably bad decision so many years ago.

My spouse reminded me this morning that fifteen years ago I was going through a horrific time in my life - a very difficult first relationship with a woman, a job which was terribly stressful and draining for me, and a financial crash-and-burn scenario which left me fearful and scarred while I tried to get back on my feet.

In general, I try to be gentle with my former selves - yes I made some bad decisions at sixteen, or twenty, or whenever - but I was doing the best I could with what I had at those times. That "be gentle with your younger selves, you did the best you could with what you had" approach has kept me from beating myself up too frequently over the years.

But this one... this was just such a waste of a lovely friendship, and I'm just not feeling very forgiving or understanding this morning.