Reevaluating life,…

Most of the time, I question the value of closure.  Sometimes, bringing up the past only rehashes the hurt for the one wronged, almost making them twice victimized.  But sometimes, closure can really be a great thing. 

I wrote about this a few days ago, but over the past 6 months, I have met up with lots of people from my past on Facebook.  For the most part, it has just been nice to reconnect with friends from school days and from different places I have lived during my time in the Army.  But today was different.  Today, I talked to someone that I haven’t had a real conversation with for almost 20 years.  I had known he was on there, but had hesitated friending him because I didn’t know if it was even remotely the right thing to do.  We have a mutual friend and she pushed him in my direction and he friended me.  Today, we happened to be on at the same time and he IMd me.  For awhile, it was just small talk, the easy stuff.  Then the past came up.  Throughout the course of conversation, I realized that all these years, I have been completely wrong about the situation and about how I thought of him.  For years, I believed the wrong things and the wrong people and held a grudge, one I had NO right to hold.  There were definately extenuating circumstances at the time, so some of  how I handled myself can be understood, but the fact remains that I was wrong, and I hurt a good person unnecessarily.  And it definately changed the course of both of our lives.

I learned things today that I had never known, things I never believed could be.  It was a perfect example of how not opening yourself up to another person and and trusting them and believing in them AND yourself can forever change your life.  Hindsight is a bitch sometimes.  There are very definitive ways that both of our lives were changed because of the way I handled things.  But I don’t believe in regret, even though the course of my life definately changed.  I believe that the choices you make, whether they be good or bad, wrong or right, make you the person that you are.  You can’t change the past, but you can try to make it right with acknowledgement and apology.  I am just glad I got to do that today.  It was a real awakening for me but one I am glad I had, no matter how wrong I turned out to be.  The amazing part is how good I feel about myself right now, knowing the truth of the situation.  The other amazing part is how easy it was to talk to him, to apologize, and to gain forgiveness.  So, for that, I thank him.