A story from my youth.

Once upon a time there were two girls i called friends. One had big soft eyes, lashes that would make your breath catch and a razor sharp mind. The other had a velvet voice and soft shiny hair; she seemed so warm. They were friends before we met though somehow, i found myself seeing the latter more than the former. I liked them both a lot. 

At that time i was dating my third boyfriend: he was charming and had a vocabulary - i too liked him a lot. I thought the world was an even more beautiful place with them in it. 

Then barely two, three months into my nascent love affair my boyfriend told me that he’s leaving me - not for my velvet-voiced friend but because of my velvet-voiced friend. He said she made him realise what we were lacking - i thought we were fine. I cried for days, for the heart was cut in two different directions. The worst was that I missed them and couldn’t stay away.

After that, she told a lot of her friends that i was a super b*tch. I had no idea what i did. I didn’t show it at the time, but I cried harder and deeper when i got home. 

Over her, I lost confidence in girls. Over him, I lost confidence in myself. I was alright with boyfriends’ attractive lady friends before that, but after... I couldn’t bear a fly’s weight in that area for a long while. 

... 

It’s been 18 years now, and plenty has happened. She’s married, as I am. Not to that boy, but to a Someone Else. I don’t know what’s happened to him. I’m not sure if she does, neither. 

I had been actively undoing layers of this hurt for years and years, thinking and knowing that this isn’t what friends did. Today, out of the blue, on the bus ride to back to beauty, i realised i am ready to forgive, because I now understand. 

She was young and beautiful. Alluring, when she wanted to be. I sadly, had no such skill or femininity at the time - I was a girl and she, enviably, was a woman. She asked for what she wanted and he gave what should have been for me.

While he had quite a few years on both of us, we were all far too youthful to know any better. Him and i - well - we had very little in common, while they connected better than we ever did. 

We made the mistakes of youth: an eye-opening time, surely, for all of us involved. I think i got away with a lot intact for my next adventures... 

...then again, perhaps I was the one who took 18 years to become beauteous again. I always had been, but today, i finally believed it, again.