> It all comes down to judgement. I misjudged someone completely - I took her to be my best friend, and she turned out to care very little for me. That happened a week ago, and I resolved the situation last night. So it's upward bound from here, I guess.
>
This scene sounds familiar, at least in its broad outlines. The absolute worst year of my life was the time from my senior year of college through my first year of graduate school. I had fallen out with a close friend of mine, and during that whole year I was burning with rage from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed at night. Many nights, I had to run a couple of miles through my neighborhood to work off all the anger and get tired enough to go to sleep. Eventually, after a long time had gone by, I burned out and started to be willing to let it all go, mostly out of sheer bone-weariness. It was a lousy way to spend the last period in which I still had some youthful passion. I'm only twenty-six--not at all old, but sometimes I still feel somehow spent from it all, and it seems hard to feel things quite as deeply as I used to. I'll say this, too: I've got a basically gentle spirit, but during that year I felt at times that I would have gladly killed either myself or my former friend. I owe thanks to my God for preserving something inside me, that I could still feel His love for me and know that something would be left standing after the storm was all over. That one blew on a long time, though.

I hope I never give someone a reason to feel utterly betrayed by me. That is just about the worst, most enraging and desperate feeling I can think of. I'm sorry to hear that this person turned out to be an insincere friend, Darien. Hope your prediction for better times ahead is true.

Iss