Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Oh man, there are a lot of those. Most of 'em are way too personal even for this blog.
But I'll go with this:
One day in junior high, I think in 7th grade, I was on the bus going home from school. There was this other girl there, with two rats in a little cage. Something happened, I don't remember what, but I wound up getting off the bus with her to help her out.
I wish I had ignored her and stayed on that bus. Strange, yes? I regret an act of kindness that earned me a friend.
And this is why:
A few months later, our friendship ended when she said she couldn't be friends with me anymore because the other kids--many of them the same ones who had bullied me all through school up until then--had started in on her too, and her parents had decided that we shouldn't be friends anymore because my unpopularity was rubbing off on her.
And you know what? It hurt, but I can't blame her. Didn't even back then. She was new to the school, better for her to not get tarred by my brush, so to speak.
Still? It sucked. I have always had a fair amount of friends, but they were almost to a person school friends. Which is to say, we were friendly at school and chatted and spent time together. But only at school. The number of friends I saw outside of school during my school years can be counted on one hand, with fingers left over. And she was one of them. After that first day, we started leaving school and riding the bus together. I spent a fair amount of time at her house (an old behemoth that had spent some time as a duplex, notable for its two kitchens), got to know her parents, and got along with them. Hell, I even spent the night there a couple of times! So this was a good friend for me back then, who dumped me for fear of becoming unpopular.
And I really wish I had never wasted any kindness on her.
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