Harsh.

What do you say to someone who hurt you 3 years ago and apologized for it but you still haven’t forgiven them? What do you say when, at this point, you are the source of your own anger? That grudge you hold is weighing you down and you aren’t able to see past what they did to you so long ago.

What do you say to your best friend of 6 years who is now becoming friends with the one who hurt you? How do you tell her, “No, you can’t, I can't allow it,” without sounding controlling, demanding, manipulative?

You remember being freshmen together, and she was there to witness the harm this person caused you. “I could never imagine being friends with her,” you’d say to each other. “She’s such a slut.” Harsh words.

Harsh.

Is that what I’m being? Harsh? I feel like that's it, but I don’t know why. I’m the victim here, I was hurt, so why is it harsh of me to voice my dislike of this villain in my life, to call them out on their outfits that showed more skin than they covered.

They're more modest now. They’re kinder, allegedly, and they want to make amends. Not with me, not with the person they wanted to fuck so badly then stood up at my first homecoming dance that I’d been so kind to invite them to. They never showed, after being so excited, and never talked to me until five months afterward.

Of course, they apologized, had realized how shitty a thing that was to do. But that pain, that anxiety I felt that night when they wouldn’t answer me, and how I spent all night talking to various other outcasts on the stairs outside the dance.

I wore my bowtie that night. It didn’t look the best. Maybe it was good they didn’t show that night, I would have embarrassed myself, with my blue dress shirt, skin-tight pants, and my hair, hard as a rock with dried gel.

They apologized. That's what I should focus on. They did so twice, really.

What bothers me the most is that when we were friends before the fiasco, my best friend thought I was “abandoning” her by being friends with someone else. She had other friends at the time, though, people who could take care of her better than I could, so I didn’t think much of it.

But right now, at this moment in time, she’s all I have left. I have no friends, and I can’t imagine befriending this other person again. The secrets about me they share with other people, the things I don’t want to be known and that she tells anyway – it's unforgivable.

But now I get to witness another friend lost, taken from me. And I don’t mean to be petty or selfish or gatekeeping. I don’t mind that she’s making more friends, I just don’t like that out of everyone in the world it had to be

Them.