Earlier this year, I took part in an affair. I got involved with a boy that I knew had a long-distance girlfriend. I didn’t know her…I had never met her. That made it easy for me to think she wasn’t a real person, and I used that to cope with what I was doing. I knew it was wrong, but I let it go on for a month until I had to force him to tell her. The guilt was eating at me, and recently, the guilt has come back.
The other day, I saw her walking into the apartment they now share. Ironically, they moved in just a couple of streets down from me, and now I have to pass their house every time I go home. It was easier when she was still a figment of my imagination, but suddenly she became very real — a real girl coming home from work, carrying whatever she brought that day. That hurt me. Just like her, I am also just a girl…a girl who took part in hurting her.
I thought I had resolved my feelings toward it over the last couple of months, but I guess not…because here I am in a little cabin in Vermont, and all I can think about is her. I couldn’t imagine being her. She picked up her life and moved to Maine for a boy who cheated on her…the same boy who told me he was never going to tell her and would have let her marry him blindly.
I think the worst part was when he said, “Sleeping with you made me realize she was the one.” I couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of his mouth. They’re so engraved in my mind…it’s like they haunt me in my sleep. Surprisingly enough, during our last conversation, he told me that he was able to forgive himself, so he no longer had to feel guilty for what he had done.
I don’t think I ever did. I don’t feel guilty every day, but it definitely comes and goes more often than I would like. My friend told me that I should ask God for forgiveness…and I did…but it’s not exactly forgiveness that I’m worried about.
This man who swore up and down that he loved this girl still cheated…and they’re still together. I don’t think she knows the half of what he said. I feel sorry for her; she deserves so much more. I told him once that I hoped I would never end up with a man like him — he bawled like a baby, just like he should have.
I pray to God every day that a man like him never crosses my path again. But karma’s a bitch and a bitch she will be.