Unburdening

He wrote to ask me why I won't be attending. As what he called his "dear friend," he hopes that I will come if at all possible, and assured me that I did not have to tell my reason to him if it is too personal, or if I don't want to...but to please know that he would like me to come.

I felt so bad for him reading the few, plaintive lines. In that moment, I wished I was a different kind of person...one who had not loved him as I did...one who simply had enjoyed his friendship and wanted his best...someone who would not dare miss the wedding of someone so important to her. If the best part of our friendship could have been distilled, the part in which we were just two angsty artists trying our best to be good Christians, sarcastic, kind of melancholic in disposition, equally scarred by our childhoods, generous souls...then maybe I could watch him make his vows, then maybe I could be more happy for him than anyone else, because I would know what a miracle it is that he finally found someone...

For the last couple of weeks, Sarah has been planning to tell him how she has felt about the six years that comprise our friendship (his and mine), and what she perceives to be his lack of acknowledgment, and in some cases his slipshod regard of me, simply as a person...

When I called her and told her that he'd asked, her plan to write him was expedited, and she wrote and sent what I believe is the best possible letter to him that speaks to the "state of the union," regarding this matter.

I have been saving face for half a decade. Wanting to be known, but fearing that my only hope of having any part of him was utterly dependent upon remaining hidden, decorum personified, never pushing past a certain point.

When he asked me, and allowed for my reasons being too personal to share, I wondered. What "personal" reasons would or could ever keep one friend from another's wedding, without that person having some inkling as to what those reasons are?

This is the truth's hour to strut upon the stage and have its say at last.