Gossip Girls

It's amazing how for so long you can think that the past is actually in the past. That things that happened months ago, are left there, a distant memory that no one really tends to turn back to because it's easier to avoid it. That you've managed to move on, come out of it a broken soul but kind of sew yourself back together, however mishmash that may be. That you no longer think about it so why should anyone else.

In a day all those beliefs can be turned on their heads and you find that you're still, months on, something to talk about. In a day you find out who your friends are, and who never were. And you find out how people manage to cover up their own guilt by labelling the innocent as guilty.

I didn't sleep with him. I wasn't ready. I trusted him to a point, the point where I trust most people, the point that since him doesn't really exist any more, the point he took with him along with everything else.

Behind every girl who doesn't trust, is the guy who took it away from her.

Today I find out that it's my fault he cheated. That it's my fault I got used, and hurt, and lied about, and talked about. That it's my fault that she got hurt too, that it's my fault that she was so naive to go back to him. It's my fault because I "should have know".

Friends. Friends are the ones who have said this. Not close friends, not friends I really talk to all that much any more, but friends who said they felt sorry for me when they found out their best friend was a lying, cheating, two-faced scum bag. Friends who swore not to forgive him easily but who, two days after it all came out in the open, went out and celebrated his 22nd birthday. Friends who still see him everyday and act as though nothing ever happened. Friends who avoid me in the hall. Friends who look at me and think I don't don't notice. Friends whose conversations go quite when I walk into a room. Friends who blame me to make themselves feel better for forgiving the most hurtful person I have ever had the unfortunate mistake of caring for.

I didn't sleep with him. I wasn't ready. For this very reason.

So please, feel free to bitch about me behind my back in the library. To retell the story a million times over in your own edited edition of events that make me look like the bad guy and you all like saints. Miss out the parts where he lied to me just as much as he did to you. Forget to tell them that he was falling in love with me and then going back to her. Neglect to share that every night he wasn't out with you he was in my bed making plans with me and skip over the part where he nursed me when I was ill. Erase all the blame from him and land it all on me if you wish, if that is what it is you need to do to make yourselves feel better about your own actions then and ever since.

And while you do that I'll sit at home knowing that my friends, the ones who sat with me and said nothing while I cried myself to sleep every night, the ones who made me eat even just a piece of bread when all I had had for a week was water, the ones who helped me laugh when I believed the glorious sound had become a fictional character in a fairytale, are real friends. That they mean their words, that they do not blame me at all for getting hurt, only for caring enough to leave myself open for injury in the first place, which really is the bravest thing a person can do, that they will stand up for me when people like you are sharing the story with strangers, adding in new lines and taking out old, and that they will tell you to be quiet and stop your gossiping, for that moment at least.

I thought after all this time that people were past this. That it was a forgotten history in a tiny chapter of my life that I never had to revisit unless I chose to.

I know now that such luxuries do not exist. That your past is never past because it is always a part of your future. You cannot leave your past behind, you cannot escape it because it will always be a part of you, but it is something you can chose to become a help or a hindrance, and I'll be damned if you are a hindrance to me!