Emma Bezzle
V.I.L.E.
Not at all. There are perhaps a few things I regret not doing, but I try not to look back on the past and wonder 'What if?'
I mean, there was this one thing - I'm not sure if it even counts as a regret since most of the time I don't regret it, but sometimes I wonder...I mean I just...*sighs*...whatever. Here goes:
The whole thing start back in elementary school in the 5th grade. A new kid joined my class that year, a boy named Tyler. I didn't have any friends at the time and he never got adopted into one of the one of the already established friend groups, so the two of us tended to gravitate towards each other - the two loners silently having the other's back. As the year went on, we started to do everything together: we ate lunch together, spent recess time together, and partnered together for group work whenever we could. He was quiet at first, and that was fine by me, but as we spent more time together, he slowly started to change. It was like that first beam of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover before the whole sky clears; he smiled more, didn't smother his laughter, and he could talk my ear off about the latest book he'd read about sharks. It wasn't until my dad said something that I realized I was smiling more too.
The school year ended and Tyler and I didn't see or speak to each other all summer, but that didn't seem to matter once middle school started and we were again in the same class. We picked up right where we had left off. Everything was just as it had been in elementary school...at least, until Tyler asked me to come over to his house after school one day. I think subconsciously I knew that Tyler came from a well-to-do family - I mean, I went to a pretty nice school so most of the kids did - but Tyler never acted like it, not like the other kids did. So it was kind of a huge shock to me when we arrived at his house and it was nice. Like, really nice; the kind of nice that makes you uncomfortable and scared to touch anything because you might ruin it. We hung out until his parents came home and we all had dinner together. Watching them all together...they were perfect: a perfect family in a perfect house and I...wasn't. It got easier though. The more I went over to his house the more I found myself relaxing, although I never forgot that I was an impostor in this life.
Again, for a while everything was good. The next hurdle came when Tyler asked the question I'd been dreading for months:
Why don't we go over to your house?
I couldn't. The possibility of letting Tyler come over to my home never existed. Tyler was my first - my only - friend and I refused to jeopardize how he viewed me by letting him see the dilapidated apartment I returned to every day. I gave excuse after excuse; my dad was at work, my dad was sick, etc. But I could tell after a while that Tyler was getting tired of my excuses. So I had a choice: either explain to him why I didn't want him to see my home, or make it so that he no longer had a reason to come over in the first place. I decided that I would rather give him up myself than risk him rejecting me.
So yeah - I purposefully sabotaged my friendship with a boy who had been nothing but kind to me all because I was too ashamed of my living situation. Sometimes I think I made the wrong choice. Sometimes I think that I let my own fear and insecurity get the better of me. Sometimes I think that the Tyler I knew would never have judged me because I was poor, and that I hurt him deeply for no reason.
But only sometimes.
The whole thing start back in elementary school in the 5th grade. A new kid joined my class that year, a boy named Tyler. I didn't have any friends at the time and he never got adopted into one of the one of the already established friend groups, so the two of us tended to gravitate towards each other - the two loners silently having the other's back. As the year went on, we started to do everything together: we ate lunch together, spent recess time together, and partnered together for group work whenever we could. He was quiet at first, and that was fine by me, but as we spent more time together, he slowly started to change. It was like that first beam of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover before the whole sky clears; he smiled more, didn't smother his laughter, and he could talk my ear off about the latest book he'd read about sharks. It wasn't until my dad said something that I realized I was smiling more too.
The school year ended and Tyler and I didn't see or speak to each other all summer, but that didn't seem to matter once middle school started and we were again in the same class. We picked up right where we had left off. Everything was just as it had been in elementary school...at least, until Tyler asked me to come over to his house after school one day. I think subconsciously I knew that Tyler came from a well-to-do family - I mean, I went to a pretty nice school so most of the kids did - but Tyler never acted like it, not like the other kids did. So it was kind of a huge shock to me when we arrived at his house and it was nice. Like, really nice; the kind of nice that makes you uncomfortable and scared to touch anything because you might ruin it. We hung out until his parents came home and we all had dinner together. Watching them all together...they were perfect: a perfect family in a perfect house and I...wasn't. It got easier though. The more I went over to his house the more I found myself relaxing, although I never forgot that I was an impostor in this life.
Again, for a while everything was good. The next hurdle came when Tyler asked the question I'd been dreading for months:
Why don't we go over to your house?
I couldn't. The possibility of letting Tyler come over to my home never existed. Tyler was my first - my only - friend and I refused to jeopardize how he viewed me by letting him see the dilapidated apartment I returned to every day. I gave excuse after excuse; my dad was at work, my dad was sick, etc. But I could tell after a while that Tyler was getting tired of my excuses. So I had a choice: either explain to him why I didn't want him to see my home, or make it so that he no longer had a reason to come over in the first place. I decided that I would rather give him up myself than risk him rejecting me.
So yeah - I purposefully sabotaged my friendship with a boy who had been nothing but kind to me all because I was too ashamed of my living situation. Sometimes I think I made the wrong choice. Sometimes I think that I let my own fear and insecurity get the better of me. Sometimes I think that the Tyler I knew would never have judged me because I was poor, and that I hurt him deeply for no reason.
But only sometimes.
