I went to an all-girls, private, Catholic high school and one of my best friends during those four years was K. She and I were friends back then and I saw that she was Friends with one of our mutual classmastes on Facebook so I sent a Friend Request. Two or three different times. Each time, she must have removed the request because the option to send a Friend Request kept becoming available to me. I couldn't figure out why she kept doing that - I mean, we had some great times in high school.
I was kind of chuckling to myself, thinking: "K, what's the problem here? Surely you can't still be holding a grudge that I didn't really care for your boyfriend at the time (who she has apparently been married to for quite some time), can you?! That seems a little over-the-top. C'mon, let it go - let's be friends again already!"
Then I remembered, I wrote her a terribly harsh letter telling her all sorts of mean, nasty things, culminating with "I am through with you forever" about a year or two after we graduated high school.l (Can you say "black-and-white thinking"?!)
So rather than chuckling at her stubborn refusal to accept my Friend Requests, I felt horrible. She obviously remembered my awful words over the years and was rightfully holding them against me. I couldn't blame her for that, once I remembered what I did to her. I was awful, horrid, terrible, atrocious, horrible - every bad description you can think of. I want to say the letter was (hand-written) about 10 pages long, telling her every little thing that I thought was wrong with her. I was truly despicable.
I sent her a message saying:
Quote:
It took me a while to remember that letter I wrote to you years ago. I get it now and I want to apologize for all the things I said in that letter. I don't remember now what I said in the letter but I do remember that it was quite long and pretty harsh.
If it makes any difference, I was crazy back then. Really and truly. I had borderline personality disorder (BPD) and I was definitely in full-blown "black-and-white-thinking" mode when I said those things to you in that letter. I couldn't accept or make sense of one tiny piece of who you were and in my crazy brain at the time, if one part was "wrong" then the whole thing was wrong. I wrote you off because of that. I "threw the baby out with the bathwater" in a sense.
I can't take the words back and I can't undo the last twenty years since I put those words to paper. I can only tell you that I'm not that person anymore and I'm very ashamed of my behavior back then. I have learned a tremendous amount since those days and I've actually grown up. I can see the grey in the world now and accept people for exactly who they are.
So I don't know if my sincere apology makes any difference to you after twenty years - I just thought I needed to apologize to you regardless. I was completely out of line and everything I said was totally out of line.
I do remember the good times we had during our high school years and I hope that at some level you're able to remember those times too.
Anyway, it's nice to see that you're still with G (assuming that the last name is an indication) after all these years. You obviously knew more about love at that age than I did. It took me ten years to catch up to your level of wisdom and insight.
I hope you're happy and doing well.
I don't feel any better about how awful I was back then because that can't be undone. I don't feel proud of myself for apologizing - I'm not preening that I was "a big person for offering the apology." It needed to be done. I was wrong, I needed to apologize. It has taken me twenty years to give her the apology she deserved two decades ago. I know my apology doesn't wipe the last twenty years clean and she may never forgive me. I can't control that aspect of this.
I am glad, though, that I was able to remember my misdeeds and take responsibility for my actions. I am glad that I have matured enough to offer the apology. Regardless of the outcome, I am glad that I have come as far as I have over the last twenty years (really only over the last ten years, which was when my recovery journey started.)
I thought I would share because I vaguely recall someone recently posted about shame and/or embarassment over past actions. I feel those things too over this 20 yr old issue with K but I've accepted them. I will always feel shame about how I treated her. That shame, though, is now being offset by my positive feelings about accepting responsibility for my actions, having matured and offering the heart-felt apology. The past is the past, it cannot be undone or even changed. I can only add to history with offsetting actions and hope for the best.