Of Time and Hope

A year ago yesterday, I was on Seventh Heaven: my birthday the day before had been amazing. I had my friends with me - everyone in that college I could have wished to be on that lunch table with me; I was on the high that a new semester would always give me, with a thousand plans and a whole lot of antecipation; and I was in love with the guy sitting next to me, who I had been driven to believe could possibly be my best friend yet.

A year after, I know I was wrong that day. Half of the people who made that day so special are out of my life - most likely for good; college is gone and, miss it as I may, I'm in a utter different stage of my life now; and that boy who I believed to be so special - «the one», even - is part of those people who have left my life - and in this case, undoubtedly for good.

Sometimes, when looking back, I come to think "How could I have been so wrong? How could I be so mistaken about someone?"; then I realise it isn't so much that I was wrong as it isn't so much that I was mistaken about him: it's simply that I did not really know him, in spite of what I believed back then. I might have thought I knew him as the palm of my hand; I was wrong.

Even though I know all of this and despite the fact I had realised it a long time ago, it doesn't hurt any less that you couldn't even manage the courage and the decency to do something as simple as send me a happy birthday text. What hurts most is that our friendship was what I valued most and what I always tried to preserve - the same friendship on which you just spat.

It's sad, but it's the past; what I've also realised is that I kept going forward and that's where I want to go. "Time moves mountains, they say" and hope is within me, growing strong and strong no matter what life throws its way. So here I am: welcome, 22nd birthday; it's gonna be a hell of year!