I used to hang out with a group of friends and had a major falling out with them about several years ago. I would go into detail about it, but I'm still not exactly sure what happened. I pissed them off, apparently, so much so that they pretty much cut off contact with me, but not until after one of them, who was my best friend at the time (best man at my 1st wedding, hung out with him all the time) told me I pretty much sucked.
Now, at the time, I was going through a pretty rough patch. Within the span of a little over a year, I was in a pretty serious accident, got divorced and lost my job. So I probably wasn't the best friend to have at the time. However, since then, I've gone through some pretty incredible personal changes, and feel I'm a much better person than I used to be. My ex-wife and I are on friendly terms - I would even say that we're friends, except I don't really see her or interact with her that much (though we do share the occasional e-mail). So I don't know why I haven't been able to reestablish contact with my former friends.
My relationship with them, looking back, was like a lot of my friendships growing up - I was pretty much a follower. There were 7 of us, including 2 couples. One dominant male personality, one dominant female, and the rest of us. We were very tight, though also very cliqueish. I often got into arguments with my ex-wife about them, she felt that they didn't like her and that I always took their side on any difficulties that arose (she was right, I totally took their side all the time).
I should clarify that and say that I do have a good relationship with one of them, Vicki, but it's more of an e-mail every few months, check-in kind of thing. The rest of them, nothing. I've tried e-mailing, inviting them to parties, baseball games, etc. Not a nibble. That's not exactly true. My former best friend responded to one of my e-mails (I sent a mass e-mail to everyone I knew, saying that I had a spare Nationals ticket and wanted to know if anyone wanted to go)with a really ugly response. It was pretty cryptic, actually, saying something along the lines of "some things are never forgotten nor forgiven". Whoa!! Let me reiterate that I never physically harmed, stole from, or anything else from him. I have no idea where the vitriol comes from. The last thing he said to me was that I wasn't honest with them during my divorce. I'm not sure what exactly I was supposed to have been honest about - my wife and I had some serious issues, neither of us were equipped to deal with it, and we broke up (it's a lot more complicated than that, but you get the idea). If the 2 of us were able to deal with it, move on, and remain friendly, then WTF is going on with my former friends? My response to him was basically this -
Dude, I'm sorry you feel this way, but I've moved on with my life, have a great wife and family, awesome friends, and just wanted to go to a baseball game. Sorry you feel that way. Take care of yourself.
I told my little brother about it, and he was probably more pissed than I was. I had to talk him out of calling my old friend up and cussing him out.
My circle of friends has grown immensely since the break-up with my old crew, and one may wonder why I feel this need to reconnect. I guess it's partially closure, partially a genuine concern about what's going on their lives.
Christ, this has been one long, rambling post. Lucky for me hardly anyway reads this, eh?
2 comments:
It sounds to me like your current friends are much cooler.
Much, much cooler! ;-)
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