sticks and stones

What's the meanest thing you've ever done to someone?

Broke up with my high school boyfriend three years in a row on his birthday. I know, I know - you're wondering how that's even possible. Well, I used to have this 'spring-cleaning' mentality about my life when I was a kid and would have this desperate urge to fix my life drastically in the new year. So every January, I would end up weighing all the problems in my life, including our sweet, but juvenile relationship and would end up breaking up with him. His birthday just happened to be in January, but as luck would have it, I did end up breaking up with him within days of it every time. I think I knew it was coming up, and maybe I just felt it was nicer to get it out of the way before the event.

The breaking-up part wasn't the worst, though. ("'Cause breakin' up is hard to do....")  I think the worst was staying with him after the first year. You see, within months of hooking up in high school, I took off for summer vacation and he slept with my best friend while I was gone. I claimed to forgive him when I came back and found out, but years later I realized that I never actually had - that I'd been holding it over him instead. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't quite a saint, and each year managed to give me plenty of material to break up with him over: drugs, lying about drugs, getting friends to lie to me about drugs, etc. But when it was all said and done and then some, I realized that no one deserved the emotional suffering I put him through.

Years after our breakup and never having stayed in contact, I called him up and apologized for having been such a bitch. I was really, really upset and remember crying into the phone, realizing that he had absolutely no reason to forgive me, but he did. Forgiveness is truly an amazing gift, in both the strength it takes to grant and the utter peace it gives when bestowed.