A Guide to Trusting the Unworthy

There are some conversations you wish you never had.

There are some things in life that you wish you had been ignorant of. There are some feelings you wish you had never experienced. There are some people in life who you wished hadn’t turned out the way they did.

But inspite of all your intelligence and knowledge and all the advice that everybody gave you, that is exactly what you run after.

You think of yourself as an ideal friend. You think that you would make your best efforts to be loyal and defend. You automatically assume that others follow these unwritten norms of friendship too.

You meet him in your Junior year, and you become friends. He’s nice and funny and it seems to you that he would always be there to help you out in a tough situation. You have tons of mutual friends, and you somehow always end up on the same team. 

You play games together. You crack stupid jokes. He jokes a lot. You joke a lot. It’s extremely comfortable and fun. You have the best time during school breaks, and do the most ridiculous things. You start thinking of him as a close friend. He confides things in you (Or you think he does.) You start telling him your secrets. You spent hours talking to him and your other friends about your problems and the possible solutions.

You become even closer friends. You trust him implicitly and you naturally assume that he feels the same way about your friendship. You wouldn’t hear anything against him and would always defend him. Because you fall the unwritten norms of friendship. To stand by and defend your friend without a second thought. Your other friends gradually stop telling you that they don’t think that you are in good company, because they believe you have utmost faith in him. And the sad part is, that they are absolutely right.

It isn’t until school ends that you realize. That you hear about what he actually did and said about you. Of what a demeaning view he held of the friendship you two shared. Of how he had laughed at you, passed snide remarks on you behind your back to his guy friends. How you had become the butt of every joke. All this while while you had blindly thought that he was all but your closest friends.

You are shocked. You spend days talking to yourself, trying to convince yourself that this really HAD happened. That he REALLY HAD done something like that to you. You spend days convincing yourself of the cruel reality. And yet, somewhere and somehow you have that little spark in your heart telling you that he wasn’t completely wrong. A little hope that somehow things would put themselves right again and that he would have a nice, solid explanation to all of this. An explanation that you would rush to believe, and forgive.

You confront him. He denies it. But you know the truth and you tell him that you would forgive him. You want to tell him that you didn’t have it in your heart to hold a grudge against him because you had spent two years treasuring his friendship, and you couldn’t bring yourself to forget all the fun, the jokes, the ridiculousness of your friendship had been nothing but a farce. You want him to explain, to convince you – and you know that all it would take from his side to convince you was a simple apology. That was all that you need from him. And you would forgive him.

You tell him this. He still doesn’t accept it.

And then comes the moment of truth. That two second moment which shattered all the hope you have of recovering that friendship. Three lines that took the floor from beneath your feet. Three lines that make you feel like a common whore. Three lines that kill every being of self respect you have for yourself, and for him. Three lines that don’t anger you, but that break you. Slowly, and gradually.

You think about it for a while after that. You wonder what you would do, how you would react when you see him again. You imagine various scenarios in your head. You fantasize about shouting at him, slapping him. But when you do see him, you realize that you can’t slap him. You can’t even shout at him. In fact, you can’t bring yourself to say a word to him. So you pretend that he doesn’t exist. He complies.

But as soon as he gets the chance, he approaches you, denying any involvement, claiming to be innocent. You are blank. You do not know what to say. So you say what you have never said to a living soul before. You say what you had pledged to never say to anyone  for the sake of the little morality you wished to maintain in this vast sea of debauchery. But then again, now you understand why they say it. You pick up your bag, throw it over your shoulder, and say “Fuck You!” before you turn to leave.

There are some conversations you wish you never had. This isn’t one of them.