A conversation with the guy who screwed me up

How's that for a great title for a blog post, eh?  It makes me laugh to read it, but yet it's true.  Read on my friends. Read on.  (And as a disclaimer, should someone be reading this who knows who this person is, do NOT name names or anything remotely identifying.  I'm trying to blog, not "out" someone who is no longer an asshole. Thanks.)

Once upon a time, I was just your average teenage girl. I really was.  I was in love with the guys in Duran Duran and had seriously questionable taste in clothes. It was, after all, the 80s.  And then...I met this guy.  We'll call him "Bob" since, y'know, that's totally not his name.

I met Bob on my 15th birthday and was smitten. Probably because he was the bad boy/rebel and what sweet, innocent (stupid) girl doesn't go for that, right? Right.  He was my first date, first kiss.  I'd never call him a "boyfriend" though because we barely dated. Maybe 6 or 7 times.  Then we ended up having some weird, dysfunctional...something...going on about a year or so later where we were some strange version of friends.  Anyway, I've blocked a lot of it out for various reasons.  But I'll wrap that part of the story up by saying he was bad news.  He was arrested repeatedly for God knows what. My parents had long since forbidden me to date him.   Just bad, bad news.

This is the guy who screwed me up.  Just screwed. me. up.  If I went into deep analysis I could say that this screw up colored how I have related to men ever since, but let's not do that.  I know it deep down.  And perhaps now things have come full circle.  And maybe I'll get unscrewed (in a good way, mind you).  Read on please. I promise it's worth it.



I have known for a while that Bob was back in our hometown for a few years now, but our paths have had no reason to cross until Tuesday. I won't get into specifics, but will simply say we had reason to be occupying the same space at the same time.  I, however, was not going to make any attempts at communication. Bob, it seems, had other ideas.

Now let me say that I forgave Bob years ago for being an asshole back in high school.  But I still wondered how I would feel if we ever ran into each other.  I quickly found out that I would feel good. Very good.  Bob approached me and we ended up talking for probably close to 45 minutes.  It should have been really strange, but it wasn’t. Or maybe it SHOULDN’T have been really strange because it was 23 or so years ago that I knew him.  Life goes on and if you can’t go on with it and let things go, then what are you doing to yourself?

Anyway, we had the usual, “hi, how are you? I’m fine blah blah blah” conversation and then he was telling me about how his life is now – he’s married with kids and now has a good relationship with his parents.  That all seemed to really baffle Bob. I think he can’t believe he made it out of his teenage years alive and he’s probably not wrong!  He even made jokes about being arrested repeatedly in high school and how he behaved.  It was really a fascinating conversation. He seemed so baffled at times at how his life is now, that at one point I looked at him and said, “I hate to tell you this, but I think you’ve become an adult!”

We were a ways into our chat when he apologized to me for being an asshole back in high school.  It was really out of the blue, but we had talked a lot about how he has changed and turned his life around. Got his degree and graduated summa cum laude, though he was sorry it took him 10 years longer than it should to do it.  He was wondering how different his life could have been if he’d been a different person in high school. But in the end he said that he did not care about how he treated most of the people he knew back then, but that I had always been so sweet and he felt bad about how he treated me.  I told him the truth, which was that I had hated him for a while, but that I had forgiven him a long time ago.  I think he needed to tell me that and to know that he had been forgiven.  And I guess I needed the apology and to give the forgiveness too.

It was all very, very cool.  Honestly, it was like talking to an old friend that you haven’t seen in a while and now they are in front of you and you are having this honest conversation about how things used to be and how they are now.  By the end of it I was nearly ready to reach out and hug him.  It was freaky.

Bob  told me that even living in the tiny speck that is our town, he never runs into people from high school.  I think that suits him fine, but surprises him as well.  His wife knows all about who he was before they met, but I think talking to someone who knew him back then was different and enjoyable for him. He told me that he’d talked more to me than he does to anyone except his wife.  Maybe it was all therapeutic for him. 

After a few more exchanges, we said goodbye and I walked away. Smiling. 

As I think about it, we talked about so many things. It really was like talking to an old friend, but at the same time you know that you’re not.  I did tell him that I was so glad we’d talked and that it was probably the highlight of my day and I meant it. I mean, how often do you get an apology like that?  It wasn’t what he said, but that he bothered to say it.  And obviously it’s something that has crossed his mind at least once or twice over the years.  We are certainly NOT going to become friends, God no, but if our paths cross again, I’ll be able to smile genuinely and be glad to see him.

There is so much  more I'd love to say on this subject, but it's hard to do it without including specific details and while I wanted to tell this story, I don't want to "out" who this person is or all of our personal business.  But I feel like something has come full circle now.  I now have this memory of our conversation so when I think of his man, I will smile.  And maybe when I think of that boy, I'll smile too.  And maybe,  just maybe, I'm starting to become unscrewed.  I sure hope so. I have a lot of issues and a lot of them started with Bob.  Maybe they can end with Bob in some ways too.