Field of Blue Children

It's the title of a short story by Tennessee Williams.

God has blessed me with a great life: the best husband, the best family, the best friends. Je ne regrette rien...except for the apologies I've failed to make. In many ways, I have not lived the life I should have, and when I think about it, I feel so much shame and regret and sorrow, probably much more, in fact, than the people I hurt. It's harder, I think, to be the person who hurts someone than to be the person who is hurt.

I've been thinking about this a lot since talking to my friend over the weekend. There are so many of these unmade apologies. The boy to whom I wrote a letter explaining why I would never like him. Who, years later, seeing me shivering at a party, gave me his jacket. A really sweet boy who did not deserve the shit I dealt out. The man who, while performing in front of a large crowd, still managed to pick me out, even though I was sitting near the back. Who gave me a stuffed animal I promptly named Roadkill. Whose calls I didn't return and whose emails I ignored. The man who told me he had loved me for a long time, who said he didn't know what he would do without me. To him, I probably owe the biggest apology.

But he's not the one I think of most often, and not the one I'm thinking of now. Right now I'm thinking of the man who I had thought of as a great friend, one of my closest. Who, on Valentine's Day one year, described a situation with a girl he was in love with, and asked what I thought. And I, who was only half listening, did not realize he was talking about us, and blew him off, saying something flippant and harsh. But we stayed friends. The period during which our friendship took place was one of the hardest in my life (for reasons completely unrelated to him). I cried. A lot. He was there to hold me, rub my back, bring me Kleenex, flowers. When we went to the gym, even when he was out of sight he would somehow materialize if some other guy was bugging me. When I was being stalked, he used to sleep on my floor. We spent all of our free time together. His parents loved me. Everyone we knew thought we were a couple. And I still didn't understand. I thought he was one of my best friends.

Then we started fighting all the time. And I still didn't understand. Finally, we stopped being friends. And, when I finally understood, it was too late. I suppose in reality it had been too late from the beginning. There was never any room for him in my life except as a friend. But if I hadn't been so stupid, maybe I could have spared him. And for that, I am still so, so sorry.