My Biggest Shame

I realise I might be ever so slightly flawed. Okay, maybe a bit more than slightly ... fine, fine, I admit it, I'm very flawed. But for the most part I'm very aware of my flaws so I don't need anybody to tell me that I'm stubborn, passive aggressive, or that I can be argumentative and harsh (though I'm not sure if that's a flaw since I'm a big believer in judging people by the same standards that I set myself). But that's besides the point, the point is I sometimes struggle to admit that I am wrong, and I would rather ignore a problem with someone than confront it, that I can isolate myself from the people that I really should let in. I'm pretty sure you get it, wrapped up in this pretty package is a whole lot of unpretty. But I get it too, I'm painfully aware of all of my bad habits and characteristics, which is why I hang on to this memory; this memory of a time where I became a person I should have been better than, when I acquired a whole new set of flaws I would never ever have attributed to myself. Here's the story.

On my first day at university, I made lots of friend but three in particular became my close friends; they were Becky, Alice and Marya. We lived on the same floor of the residence building and made plans after three months to share a house together in our second year. Ironically, we all became friends out of a mutual admiration for Becky who was so funny and outgoing at a time when most of us were still pretty shy. Becky met a guy on her first day at university and pretty soon they became inseparable and soon she started making excuses about why she couldn't come out with us, or she would pretend she wasn't feeling well so as to cancel our plans. After a while we started bonding really well without Becky and actually started getting really frustrated with her. She on the other hand started hanging out with her boyfriend's friends who really didn't like us. Needless to say, we were really weren't the best of friends by the end of the first year but seeing as we had a house with all our names on the lease, we had to live together, and things got really bad.

I'm not trying to justify my behaviour because it really isn't justifiable but I'd like to explain how things became the way they did. Becky had some little annoying habits such as talking through films, TV programmes etc, her boyfriend practically moved in and they'd drink all the milk but she would never ever buy any, or anything else for that matter, she would make annoying comments (like comment on how much one of us was eating even though she knew we were conscious about our weight), though now I realise that she probably didn't mean it maliciously. It was little things but as none of us was the confrontational sort, we'd talk about it to each other instead of talking to her directly. Or we'd set up these elaborate scenes where one of us would come into the lounge and say something like 'You guys, I'm sick and tired of always buying milk, can one of you please do it?' and the other two would recount when last they had bought milk all in the hope that Becky would pipe up and say, 'actually, it's my turn. I haven't bought any in a while'. I know, I know, one of us really should have sat her down and said, 'Becky it's your turn to buy milk, can you please start pulling your weight and take on your share of responsibilities?’ It started off with us getting annoyed about valid things, but the more annoyed we got and the more we'd talk about it within ourselves, the more petty we became. Because Marya, Alice and I were so close, we'd often hang out in each other's rooms and when Becky would come to spend time with us (usually using an excuse like offering us tea or wanting to borrow a book because we must have made her feel so unwelcome) we'd leave one by one until Becky would leave too and then within half an hour we'd be assembled in a different room again. She must have sensed the tension because the worst we became, the nicer she was and the more of an effort she would make.

I often felt bad but most of the time, I was too annoyed to really care.

In my third year, I moved to Canada for my first semester and I heard things in the house were even more strained. However, with the distance, I started to realise how mean we were being and how much I would have hated it if I were in Becky's shoes. And then Alice's ex-boyfriend told her that Becky had told him that she would hear us talk about her and she really hated living with us and it really hit home just how horrible we were. Because we never confronted her, we never let her know what our issues with her were thereby not giving her a chance to do anything about it. We basically never even gave her a chance. I can't even begin to explain how ashamed of myself I felt then (and even now, whenever I think about it) and I resolved to stop. And I did, in my last two semesters, I stopped bitching about her (even though I did let her know what I thought every now and then) and we even became closer. I became more patient with her and actually started seeing the good in her again instead of focusing on her flaws.

I'm blogging about it and I force myself to think about it every once in a while just so I remember what kind of a person I'm capable of being if I'm not careful. Like I said, I know my flaws but I never would have thought I was capable of being a cold, intolerant bitch and that's exactly what I was.