MM & M: The Cardinal Rule

So, I've come to the 'one'......

I know you think you've been waiting for this 'one' for all of three weeks now, but you haven't.

In fact, I've been wanting to skip this 'one' altogether. Pretend I didn't have to write about this, and pretend everything was just happy, happy, happy.

I've been thinking and praying about how to recollect this without giving undue attention to topics better left untouched, so we'll just see how it goes.

So bear with me while I'm a little vulnerable and recount the dumbness.

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As I have tried to establish, I was a bit boy-crazy growing up. Just a liiiiiittle. Not always outwardly, although at times it manifest itself that way.

Call it inexperience, call it immaturity, call it whatever you want, but I broke the cardinal rule when it comes to boys.

***Never, EVER let a boy come between you and your best friend.

I will take that mistake with me to my grave. It is truly one of my biggest regrets in all of my life. I let a boy....a stupid boy....a boy not worth the air to speak his name....ruin a friendship.

Not just any friendship, but the kind where you're there for each other during the pivotal moments in each other's lives. The kind where you harbor each other's secrets and feelings in the deepest part of your souls. You support, and encourage, you laugh and cry with each other.

And I took that friendship and punted it away. For a stupid, stupid boy.

The memory of these events churn in my stomach and tears pool in my eyes, because he WASN'T WORTH IT.

Obviously, I came to my senses. And moved far beyond that incident. But it wasn't without some major battle scars. But it was without my best friend.

I went to college without the friendship of my 'best friend'. I felt empty and alone, and so gun-shy. I felt the chance of messing up yet another friendship was significant, so I withdrew. Spending too much time with yet another worthless boy.

I busied myself with all but what college offered me. Instead of being involved and having fun my freshman year, I went to class, worked and studied. Ahem, 'studied'. Now...I did have friends, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish you to think that I was a complete hermit, but I never let anyone get 'too close'. The feelings of loss were still too fresh, and the wound too great.  Most of my friendships were merely surface.

Yet another regret that I will take with me to my grave. College. The time where you are to build {best} friendships that last forever, was wasted by wallowing in my own pity and selfishness. Times you can never get back, and wounds that almost never heal.

I am thankful that God saved me. Not only from the pit of hell, which I would no doubt have found without Him, but from myself. He drug me out of my own pit that I had so carefully constructed for myself and hedged me from mistakes that would have been completely life deprecating.

I owe Him all the credit.