Right before I signed in here, I felt this strange kind of obligation to go back and reconnect with some friendships that have fallen apart over the past couple of years. Why? Because of the friendship those people have with someone close to me. Someone who's very near to my heart, and who I want to see as happy as possible. Someone I think about more than a little bit every day - someone who I love.
Now make no mistake, this person didn't say anything to me about this potential course of events. I just felt it come up in my mind and entertained the possibility for a little while. I mean, where's the harm, right? Reconnecting with people? People who have an ill opinion of me, who have gone to varying lengths to say less than pleasant things in my absence, question my character, question my ability to have a friendship? People who I've had misunderstandings with that have caused the downturn of such friendships, and who never bothered to respond to my attempts to make it right? No, no one suggested trying to mend these bridges to me. I came up with the idea, random as it was, and entertained it while I settled in after my trip.
I considered the possibilities, both the good and the bad, and played around with a few scenarios in my head. And I'm not an idiot - I knew it wouldn't be received easily if I were to take this route. I'd have to listen to berating and chastising from these people, a rather lengthy tale of the wrongs I'd done (which I don't believe myself wholly guilty of), and possibly terms and conditions to being on speaking terms again. Maybe those thoughts were a bit extreme, but I've seen it happen before - it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen again.
And even as I considered the possibilities, dark as some might be, I knew that if it would make him happy - even if he didn't know I had done or was doing it - that I'd entertain the thought rather closely. It's a matter of proverbially swallowing my pride, choking down my own discomforts for the sake of his happiness.
If it would make him happy.
But this thought pattern started to change when I came back to sit down and write this. Why would I want people like this back in my life? Why open a door that's best left closed? Wasn't I better without these people than with them? In retrospect, it's almost a marvel how I didn't see the poison that was there before. And yet, I still held the fear close to my heart that, because these are people integrated into his (nearly) day to day life, there would be a dark influence cast over him in regards to me. After all, it wouldn't be a secret that they didn't like me. I can't imagine it's gone unmentioned.
I felt caught at a crossroads, where neither road was well lit enough for me to see its ending. And it wasn't a feeling of being slightly off center. It resonated with cold, hard fear in my stomach, something I wanted to warm away but had no means to. It feels that I've come so far. Could I really lose what means so much to me so quickly? By a hand that's not my own, or his own?
Then I remembered to check my text messages, for the first time in at least a hour.
A message was waiting, from him. And part of it was a question - a question as to confirm when I'd be coming back to see him again.
My fears went away, and the desire to let poison back into my life disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Somewhere along this winding path, this anything but smooth road that I've become acquainted with, I've come to trust him. Whether or not he's deserving of that trust by anyone else's definition is irrelevant - what matters is that I've placed my trust into him. I did it before I had even truly realized it had happened, in some kind of maddening and blinding leap forward that I knew had to be taken, were any forward ground to be gained.
And he hasn't let me down.